For immediate release                                                                         

Two Winners of HFTP Technology Hall of Fame Award Extend Association’s Profile

BELLINGHAM, Wash. (August 17, 2004) – Hotel Technology-Next Generation (HTNG), the two-year old industry association dedicated to creating new technology solution sets that interoperate seamlessly across multiple vendors, announced today that two high-profile hospitality technology experts have joined the organization in advisory roles.

Richard G. Moore, Professor Emeritus at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, will join HTNG in the newly created role of Honorary Fellow.  He plans to assist HTNG in developing close liaisons with the academic community, and he will help HTNG in communicating its message to the hotel community.  Professor Moore was instrumental in establishing information technology as an integral component of the Cornell Hotel School’s curriculum.  In 1992, he was awarded the coveted HFTP Technology Hall of Fame Award.    

Ted Horner, Managing Director of E. Horner & Associates Pty. Ltd., based in Sydney, Australia, will join HTNG as an Executive Advisor.  Mr. Horner was this year’s winner of the HFTP Technology Hall of Fame Award, and is recognized as the leading authority on hotel technology in Australia and surrounding countries.   Mr. Horner was one of the original founders of the HTNG effort and will assist the group in raising its profile and membership in the Asia-Pacific region.

Mac Smith, another founder of HTNG and Managing Consultant of Hospitality Project People, has retired from his Executive Advisor role due to other commitments and has been named an Honorary Fellow.  Mr. Smith, formerly Vice President of Information Services for Hilton International, will continue to provide valuable assistance to HTNG in recruiting European participation in the organization. 

With these additions, the HTNG leadership team expands to a fourth continent and rounds out a commitment to extend its ties to the academic community, where the industry’s future leaders are being trained.  “We are delighted that two such distinguished professionals have volunteered to support our efforts,” said Dr. Matthew Dunn, Executive Director of HTNG.  “The level of voluntary commitment we have gotten from these individuals, as well as and from our existing Board of Directors and Executive Advisors, represents clear evidence that HTNG has migrated from a good idea, as outlined in its seminal June 2002 White Paper,  into a successful process of innovation that has produced, and will continue to produce, tangible results.  Already, some of our vendor members are reporting news sales that they attribute to the products they developed within the first HTNG workgroup and showcased at this year’s HITEC show,” said Dr. Dunn.

With these additions and changes, HTNG’s leadership structure now includes the following individuals and geographic diversity:

Board of Directors

• Gebhard Rainer, VP – Hotel Systems & Finance, Hyatt International, Chicago (President of HTNG

• Mark Hedley, SVP & CTO, Wyndham International, Dallas (Vice President of HTNG)

• Jane Durment, CIO, Marcus Corporation, Milwaukee (Secretary and Acting Treasurer of HTNG)

• Glenn Bonner, CIO & Corporate VP, MGM Mirage, Las Vegas

• Michael Hwu, VP – Information Services, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Toronto

• Shannon Knox, VP Technology, Destination Hotels & Resorts, Denver

• Nick Price, CTO, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Hong Kong

• Bryan Steele, Director of IT (CTO), Thistle Hotels, London

Executive Director

• Matthew Dunn, Ph.D., President, Socratech, Inc., Bellingham, Wash.

Executive Advisers

• Daniel Connolly, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Denver, Denver

• Ted Horner, Managing Director, E. Horner & Associates Pty. Ltd., Sydney

• Jon Inge, President, Jon Inge & Associates, Seattle

• Douglas Rice, President, Stratus Management Group, Inc., Chicago

 Honorary Fellows

• Richard Moore, Retired Associate Professor, Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, Ithaca, NY

• Mac Smith, Managing Consultant, Hospitality Project People, London

About Richard Moore

Dick Moore is a Professor Emeritus at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University where he taught many of today’s hospitality technology leaders.  During his 35 years at Cornell he was instrumental in establishing information technology as an integral component of the school’s curriculum.  Professor Moore’s areas of interest and expertise are in the development and use of information technology in the hospitality industry.

Professor Moore was a member of the Hospitality Industry Standards (HITIS) advisory committee of the American Hotel and Motel Association and was chairman of the Posting Devices subcommittee.

Professor Moore earned a CDP from the Institute for the Certification of Computer Professionals.  He received an MBA and a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.  Moore was inducted into the Hospitality Financial and Technology Professional’s (HFTP) Technology Hall of Fame in June 1992.  In 2000 he was presented with a distinguished service award at FS/TEC for his contributions to the food service technology industry.  In 2004 the Hospitality Information Technology Association (HITA) elected him a fellow of the association.

About Ted Horner

Ted Horner is currently the managing director of E. Horner and Associates Pty Ltd. He has dedicated most of his working life to advancing technology in the hospitality industry. He was a founding member of the Hospitality Industry Technology Association (HITA) and created the first ever Conference and Exhibition on Technology in the hospitality industry in Australia. Mr. Horner also launched Australia’s first portal site specialising in hospitality technology, called www.hospitalitytechnology.com.au, designed to keep the Australian hospitality industry abreast of technology.   Mr. Horner has managed his own consultancy practice since 1989, and his company is now regarded as the undisputed leader among hospitality consulting companies in Australia. He was the 2004 recipient of the HFTP Technology Hall of Fame Award, and is a regular speaker at conferences in Australia and around the world, including HITEC, HITA, EurHotec, Hostec, and major regional conferences in Southeast Asia. He has also written hundreds of articles on technology since the 1980’s, for all of the major hospitality magazines in Australia and more recently overseas.

About Mac Smith

Mr. Smith is a seasoned executive-level Information Systems professional, with more than 30 years experience in the international information systems environment, including 17 years within the travel and hospitality industries.  He is currently Managing Consultant with Hospitality Project People (HPP) where he consults to lodging, travel, and transportation companies in such areas as system selection, network selection, strategic information systems design, project management for large Distribution projects.  Prior to starting HPP, Mr. Smith spent six years with Hilton International as Vice President of Information Services, with global responsibilities for strategy and implementation.  Previously, he spent seven years with Avis, the market-leading car rental company as Vice President of Information Systems for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and six years directing the internal use of information systems for Bull Information Systems within the U.K.

About Hotel Technology-Next Generation

HTNG is a non-profit organization with a mission to provide leadership that will facilitate the creation of industry solution sets for the lodging industry that:

• Are modeled around the customer and allow for a rich definition and distribution of hotel products, beyond simply sleeping rooms

• Comprise best-of-breed software components from existing vendors, and enable vendors to collaboratively produce world-class software products encompassing all major areas of technology spending:  hotel operations, telecommunications (PABX), in-room entertainment, customer information systems, and electronic distribution.

• Properly exploit and leverage a base system architecture that provides integration and interoperability through messaging; and that provides security, redundancy, and high availability

• Target the needs of hotel companies up to several hundred properties, that are too small to solve the issues themselves

• Will reduce technology management cost and complexity while improving reliability and scalability

• Can be deployed globally, managed remotely, and outsourced to service providers where needed.

Active HTNG participants include major hotel companies and vendors, including such industry leaders as IBM, InfoGenesis, MICROS Systems, Microsoft, Newmarket International, and Springer-Miller Systems.  Conceived just two years ago, HTNG membership has grown to include over 30 hotel companies, over 50 technology vendors, and 15 others (including consultants, academics, and media)

Contact:

Matthew Dunn

Executive Director

(360) 715-8741

exec.director@htng.org

www.htng.org