CHICAGO
(November 10, 2010) – Participants
attending
the annual Asia-Pacific meeting of the nonprofit trade association
Hotel
Technology Next Generation (HTNG) will learn from top industry experts
about a
wide range of technology advances in hospitality. Key topics on
the
agenda planned for 1-3 December in Macau include hotel data security,
mobile
distribution, sustainability, cloud computing, CIO insight, customer
experience
management, and new services available through application programming
interfaces (APIs).
HTNG
members meet to collaborate, learn, network and determine how to
capitalize on
the latest advances in hospitality technology to improve their
operations—whether as hoteliers or technology providers. As an
association whose direction is determined by a board that consists of many
of the
world’s leading hotel company CIOs, HTNG meeting content is truly
top-of-mind
for hotel technologists.
Immediately
preceding this year’s event will be the first Hotel IT Directors’
Roundtable
for the Asia-Pacific region. This exclusive collaborative event
for
senior level hotel technology leaders is available at no charge to
attendees,
who will gather to share experiences and perspective on the greatest
challenges
facing their hotel IT teams. The Hotel IT Directors’ Roundtable
convenes
on Wednesday afternoon, 1 December, just prior to the HTNG Members’
Meeting,
which runs from Wednesday evening through Friday 3 December.
The
agenda for the main Members’ Meeting includes sessions from some of the
industry’s leading technology names from the hotel community,
technology vendor
community, and industry associations. These distinguished experts
and
some of their unique sessions include:
- Innovation and the Cloud:
Matthew Shigenobu Muta, Director of Worldwide Industry Global Accounts,
Microsoft, will discuss emerging technologies and innovation with a key
focus on the Cloud. Comparing its transformative impact to the
invention of the PC and the emergence of the Internet, Muta will
discuss the potential of the Cloud as well as real world
implementations and offerings in the Cloud today.
- Sustainability will be addressed
with two sessions featuring several industry experts moderated by
Robert Allender, Managing Director of Energy Resources
Management. One session will address managing and measuring
energy costs; while the other will highlight hidden technologies and
tools that can save energy. Speakers include Peter Lofgren, Group
Engineering Manager, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group; Wang Kar Hong,
Director IT-Greater China, InterContinental Hotels Group; Richard
Gunawan, VP, Business & Sustainability Development Asia, Lloyd's
Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) Ltd.; Nicolas Schmitt, Managing
Director, Greenware Limited and others.
- Open APIs Enabling Application Innovation:
Richard Pulliam, Head of Enterprise Business Development, Application
Enablement, Alcatel-Lucent will present the "art of the possible"
through open innovation and application enablement from a convergence
of the network with industry APIs. It will cover the trends of
the "always on" and mobile application space and open API trends in
different industries, which are now moving into the travel and
hospitality industry. Scenarios discussed will include this
convergence enabling everything from location-based services and
communication, content delivery from living room to hotel, "connected
traveler" apps and concierge services, mobile wallets and carrier
billing, integration of social networking/media and much more.
- Revenue and Profit in a Mobile World:
Mark Hoare, Partner, Prism Partnership will address whether investing
in a mobile distribution strategy is simply a price of doing business,
much like a loyalty program or website presence, or is in fact a
genuine revenue driving opportunity. If the latter, is this latest
distribution channel facilitating a truly new revenue stream, or just
moving existing revenue from one channel to another? This session
seeks to answer these questions using real world examples of key mobile
distribution challenges and opportunities faced by several leading
hotel brands, and will also help you to assess your mobile distribution
strategy's return-on-investment potential.
- Hotel Data Security: Raju Daryanani,
VP Infrastructure & Information Security, Mandarin Oriental Hotel
Group and Henry Ng, Head of Global Professional Services, Asia, Verizon
Business, will address the threat from professional thieves that have
targeted IT systems in the hotel industry that often fail to adequately
secure credit card data. By most studies, the hotel industry is
at or near the top of list of breached industries. This session
will explore how the thieves work, and what hotels can do to protect
themselves.
- Customer Experience Management:
Micah Friedman, Director, Hospitality Industry, Oracle Corp. will
define Customer Experience Management and explain how it can alleviate
key industry pain points. Focusing on decomposing customers,
their needs, and experiences, he will identify the components of a CEM
strategy and how it can help hotels keep up with changing customer
expectations and create a differentiated experience.
- Bandwidth: Today's guest
entertainment and work productivity experience are increasingly
dependent on massive amounts of Internet bandwidth, which hotels are
challenged to provide. This megasession, moderated by Ted Horner,
Managing Director, E. Horner & Associates Pty. Ltd., will begin
with an analysis of trends, and will also cover bandwidth aggregation
and strategies for obtaining more bandwidth at less cost.
Speakers include Tom Duke, CTO, iBAHN; JP Hebert, Vice President,
Business Development, Elfiq Inc., Prakash Shukla, Senior VP & CIO,
Taj Hotels, and an additional speaker awaiting final confirmation.
- Hotel CIO Panel: Terence
Ronson, Managing Director, PertLink Limited, will moderate a panel
discussion of hotel CIOs discussing their most pressing issues.
Participants will include Nick Price, CIO/CTO, Mandarin Oriental Hotel
Group; Fanny Cheng, Director of IT, MGM Macau; Tom Dillon, VP of
IT-Asia, Venetian Macau, and at least one other top-level IT executive
from the region awaiting final confirmation.
The
association’s Executive Vice President & CEO, Douglas Rice, will
also
provide an update on the organisation’s most recent accomplishments and
share
plans about the future direction of the association. In addition
to all
of these sessions, attendees will also receive updates about HTNG’s
workgroups
that will cover newly released specifications as well as highlight
future
workgroup goals.
In all,
the meeting will provide hotel technology experts with leading-edge
knowledge
on technology best practices, improving the guest experience through
faster and
more robust deployment of technology, and a better understanding of
gains to be
made by upcoming enhancements in hospitality technology. For more
details
about the meeting, specifics on the sessions, the Hotel IT Director
Roundtable,
or registration for either event, visit http://www.htng.org/asia.
About
Hotel Technology Next Generation
The
premier technology solutions association in the hospitality industry,
HTNG is a
self-funded, non-profit organisation with members from hotel and
hospitality
companies, technology vendors to hospitality, and other industry
members
including consultants, media, and academic experts. HTNG’s
members
participate in focused workgroups to bring to market open solution sets
addressing specific business problems. HTNG fosters the selection
and
adoption of existing open standards. Where necessary, it also
develops
new open standards to meet the needs of the global hospitality industry.
Membership
in HTNG is open to hotel and hospitality companies, technology vendors
to
hospitality, consultants, academics, press and others. Currently
more
than 400 corporate and individual members from across this spectrum,
including
most of the world’s leading hotel companies and technology vendors, are
active
HTNG participants. HTNG’s Board of Directors alone represents more than
2.3
million guest rooms. Workgroup proceedings, drafts, and specifications
are
published for all HTNG members as soon as they are created, encouraging
rapid
and broad adoption. Specifications are released to the public
domain as
they are ratified by the workgroup. For more information, visit www.htng.org.
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