CHICAGO (March
15, 2012) – A stellar cast of
hospitality industry technologists, including many hotel company CIOs
and CTOs,
will gather at the Four Seasons Hotel here from April 2-5, for four
days of
diverse events designed to help attendees enhance their effectiveness,
collaborate on new technology solutions, and interact with industry
leaders. The events are organized by Hotel Technology Next
Generation
(HTNG), the global trade association dedicated to fostering the
development of
better technology for hospitality.
As an organization run by top hotel IT
leaders for the benefit of the hospitality industry, HTNG understands
the
issues that challenge hotel IT executives. This year’s conference
agenda
provides keynote presentations and panel sessions on vexing hospitality
technology issues such as social media/networking, sustainability,
entertainment systems, cellular coverage, future trends, and dealing
with
mobile devices. A special 10th-anniversary session will
feature many of the individuals who founded the organization, sharing
its
original objectives, assessing the progress made towards achieving
them, and
outlining their hopes and expectations for the future. Sessions
currently
scheduled include:
- A
New CIO’s View: Making Technology Work at Marriott: Having
just completed his
first year as Global Chief Information Officer of Marriott
International, Bruce
Hoffmeister will share his views on his role as an IT leader,
his
observations from his first year in the CIO seat, and on selling IT
projects to
the business and to the CFO.
- Hotel
Technology: The Long Term Perspective: How has
technology involved in our
industry over recent decades, and what can we learn from the successes
and
failures from that evolution? How will the macro trends that
shape our
industry interact with the rapid advances in technology over the next
twenty
years? What types of business models are likely to be
most
successful? In his first major conference speaking engagement
since
retiring as CIO/CTO of Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Nick Price will
return for the 10th anniversary conference of HTNG, an organization he
helped
to found and shape.
- In
the Trenches of Hotel Sustainability: We’ve all heard the pitch:
implementing sustainability
in hotels (or anywhere) is a “win-win.” You save money, improve
customer
service, and protect the planet. Well, if that’s true, how come we’ve
made so
little progress? The short answer is that implementing energy
efficiency and
other environmental programs is less like surgery and more like trench
warfare.
It’s brutal, messy, sometimes a total failure, and occasionally
embarrassing.
But it can also be fun, and it’s certainly worthwhile for a range of
important
reasons. In this talk, Auden Schendler,
Vice President, Sustainability
for Aspen Skiing Company and author of the book, “Getting Green Done:
Hard
Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution,” will
discuss how
to implement sustainable business practices.
- IT
Leadership Panel: What
are the hottest topics on the mind of top hotel IT leaders in
2012? From
data security to bandwidth to distribution to guest-room systems and
more, this
is the session for you to find out and ask your own questions.
Panelists
will include Mike Blake, Chief
Information Officer of Hyatt Hotels and
Resorts; Vineet Gupta, Senior
Vice President of Technology for Fairmont
Raffles Hotels International; Kevin
Quinlivan, Chief Information Officer
at Delaware North Companies; and Markus
Satterfield, Vice President and
Chief Technology and Security Officer for Hilton Worldwide.
- Make Social Media Rock in
2012: Hotel
technologists will eventually (if not already) be supporting social
media
activities from their marketers. This session will arm you with
insider knowledge,
culled from doing business in North America as well as Asia, so that
you can be
prepared to handle the global social media revolution with the right
technology
and analytics best practices. Our speaker, Morris Sim, Co-Founder
and CEO of Circos Brand Karma, who works extensively in both Asia and
the
United States, is uniquely positioned to help you understand the social
media
phenomenon in both the West and the East. With more Asians
expected to
travel in the upcoming years, he will compare and contrast the use of
social
media amongst the different segments in shaping purchase decisions.
- Impact
of Mobile Devices on the Hotel Wireless Network: Guests
routinely bring two, three, or even
more mobile devices into the hotel, and are using them not just for
e-mail and
web-browsing, but increasingly to stream entertainment programming and
to run
video-rich applications. This trend isn’t slowing down, and will have
dramatic
implications for the hotel’s wireless network infrastructure. Tom Duke,
Chief Technology Officer of iBAHN, will share the latest research into
guest behavior as well as expert forecasts of the
future, and learn what hotel systems can do to prepare to meet future
guests’
expectations.
- Meeting
Guests' Voice & Data Expectations: Wired, Wireless, Cellular,
and
Beyond: Hoteliers are
already reeling trying to meet the traffic demands that today's guests
are
placing on their data networks. At the same time, the nature of
data
communications is changing dramatically, as waves of new mobile devices
surge
into hotels. What do hotels need to do to adapt, and what's the
downside
of staying with the status quo? Are the carriers a help or a
hindrance as
they try to offload mobile traffic onto hotel WiFi networks? Are
there
viable business models to help hotels fund the necessary investments?
Will
mobility spell the end of older communication technologies such as
PBXs? This
panel session will bring business issues into focus as it explores
these
questions and others related to the sea change that's taking place in
guests'
expectations for data communications. Speakers will include Chris Farrar,
Senior Analyst at Windrose Analytics and Russell Vest, Executive
Director of Business Development at ExteNet Systems, Inc.
- New Frontiers in Guest
Entertainment
Systems: Few areas of hotel technology are seeing more
changes than
entertainment systems: high-definition early-window content
replacing
adult; reduced head-end footprint; interactive program guides; more
channels;
control via mobile apps; mobile device pairing via Airplay, DLNA, WiFi
Direct;
cloud content via NetFlix, Pandora. Where will it end? This
session
will help hotels navigate in this brave new world, where the only thing
constant is change itself! This session will feature Brennan Gildersleeve,
Director of Property Technology at Starwood Hotels & Resorts
Worldwide as
moderator, with panelists from major suppliers of entertainment
systems,
content, and equipment, including Fred
Crespo, Director of Technology
and Business Development at Samsung; Paul
Johnson, Vice President of
Product Management at LodgeNet Interactive Corporation; Vanessa Ogle,
President and CEO of Enseo; Mike Olson,
Vice President of Commercial
Products and Vertical Markets at DirectTV; and David Simpson, Executive
Vice President of Video Propulsion.
- HTNG Vision: 10
Years Later: In
2002, HTNG was founded based on a vision that hoteliers and vendors
could work
together cooperatively to design and deliver next-generation solutions
for
hospitality, and unlock data that had previously been stored in silo
systems
that couldn't talk to each other. As we celebrate HTNG’s 10th
anniversary, five of HTNG’s nine original founders will take the stage
to look
back on the original mission, to discuss its changing relevance over
time, to
comment on what the organization has - and has not - accomplished so
far, and
to give their views on where HTNG should go for the next 10
years.
Moderated by long-time HTNG volunteer leaders Monika Nerger (CIO of
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group) and Neil
Schubert (Vice President of IT
Strategy at Marriott International), participating founders will
include Dan
Connolly, Associate Dean of the Daniels College of Business at
the
University of Denver; Ted Horner,
Managing Director of Australia-based
E. Horner & Associates Pty. Ltd.; Jon
Inge, President of Jon Inge
& Associates; Nick Price,
former CIO/CTO of Mandarin Oriental Hotel
Group and now President of NetSys Technology; and Douglas Rice,
Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of HTNG.
The Conference starts with a10th
anniversary celebration on the evening of Monday, April 2 and continues
through
Wednesday, April 4, including full-day general conference sessions on
Tuesday
and Wednesday. More than 25 sponsors and tabletop exhibitors will
showcase innovative products from across the entire range of hotel
technologies. Registration for the conference is open to all
hotel
technologists who hold membership in HTNG; the membership requirement
is waived
for IT staff employed by hotel companies. For technology vendors,
memberships
are required, and are available starting at $3,750 per year, and
conference
registration at $850 per person.
While the Conference is the best-known
event of the week, other activities make this a powerful week for hotel
technology leaders. These activities include:
- On
Monday, HTNG’s forums and most of its active workgroups will hold
face-to-face
meetings to further their collaborative efforts on to address
technology
problems as diverse as cellular coverage, network infrastructure,
payment
system security, dynamic packaging, customer profile management, folio
detail,
point-of-sale connectivity, and guest device connectivity.
- Wednesday
afternoon will feature the announcement of the winners of the 3rd
annual “Most Innovative Hospitality Technology” award. Twenty
innovative
contenders are vying for the title this year, to be decided by HTNG’s
hotelier
and consultant members.
- Thursday
morning features the inaugural Hotel IT Leaders’ Roundtable for the
North
American marketplace. HTNG’s highly acclaimed roundtables,
previously
held in Europe in Asia, have quickly become a “must attend” activity
for many
hotel companies’ senior technologists, because they facilitate the
sharing of
common solutions to shared problems. The Roundtable is fully
sponsored by
HTNG, which means that qualifying senior hospitality technologists can
attend
the Roundtable for free (a maximum per company applies).
Roundtable
attendees will determine the agenda from amongst their greatest
challenges in
managing hotel technologies.
More information about the Conference and related events is online
at: www.htng.org/america
About Hotel Technology Next
Generation
The premier technology solutions association in the hospitality
industry, HTNG is a self-funded, non-profit organization 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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