Welcome Remarks


Riko van Santen, VP of Distribution, Louvre Hotels (Vice President, HTNG)
Douglas Rice, Executive VP & CEO, HTNG

Update on HTNG


This high-level overview will bring you up to date on HTNG's many activities designed to ease the burden on hotels buyiing technology while empower vendors to succeed.  Find out why HTNG continues to attract new members and retain current ones, and learn about some of our plans for the future.

Douglas Rice, Executive Vice President & CEO, HTNG

Journey Toward PCI Compliance


PCI compliance has been the biggest challenge of recent years for global hotel companies, and the need for security has never been greater. Credit card companies have largely completed the rollout of PCI in Europe and are now expanding the scope into other parts of the developed and developing world. Meliá Hotels International is the largest hotel group in Spain, with over 350 hotels in 35 countries, recently completed a major project to bring its IT systems into PCI compliance side by side with Tradyso, their CRS partner. Our speakers, who led that effort from both the hotel and QSA perspective, will describe that journey and the challenges and obstacles that needed to be overcome. They will also discuss a major effort underway within HTNG, supported by most of the major hotel groups, to help both simplify the process, facilitate interaction with third parties and achieve true end-to-end security within our industry.

Christian Palomino, IT Operations, Network & Security Director, Meliá Hotels International
Vanesa Gil Laredo, Consultancy Manger, S21Sec

Mobility:  A Multifaceted Impact on  Hotel IT


Not a day goes by in the life of a hotel IT executive that something new isn’t happening in mobility.  Mobility is changing distribution, the way guests interact with the hotel, the way they entertain themselves while at the hotel, and the way that hotel staff receive and act on information.  This session will explore the nature of these changes and help IT executives and software vendors cope with the rapid pace of change.

Daniel Krisch, Director of Client Services, h2c Consulting

Lessons from the Leading Edge


New 5-star boutique hotels can be a great testing ground for new guest-room technologies. There are many new opportunities to deliver superior guest service, but integration is always a challenge. 45 Park Lane is one of the newest high-end boutique hotels in London, and has implemented some of the latest ideas. This session will highlight both the successes and challenges of getting systems to work together to serve the guest.

Mark Campbell, CIO, The Dorchester Collection

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. Hear about the latest research into guest behaviour as well as expert forecasts of the future, and learn what you can do to prepare to meet your future guests’ expectations.

Tom Duke, CTO, iBAHN

Impact of Search Engines on Technology


Search engines have undergone massive changes in recent years as they have become socially and location-aware.  Amadeus will bring its perspective, providing insight about the impact on hotel technology from these news channels (changes in search patterns and volumes’ implications) and also about the technology solutions to respond to those changes.

Jérôme Destors - Director Hotel IT, Amadeus

Workgroup Update - Infrastructure & Device Forum


Hear what HTNG's workgroups from this forum are doing to improve the options and cost of mobile phone coverage, guest-room device integration, remote controls, wired and wireless infrastructure, and telecommunications.  The session highlight recent work and developments, but will also include a brief overview of prior work for the benefit of first-time attendees.

Forum co-chairs:
Bryan Hammer, Director of IT, EAME, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (Forum co-chair)
Michael Zetterlund, CTO-R&D, Nordic Choice Hotels (Forum co-chair)
Jean-Pascal Hebert, Vice President, Business Development, Elfiq Networks
Dayna Kully, Senior Director Vertical Business Development, Corning MobileAccess
Bryan Steele, Managing Director, Jireh-Tek Ltd.

Customer Experience Management & The Customer Profile


This session will define Customer Experience Management and explain how it can help you increase customer satisfaction while increasing revenues.  Focusing on decomposing customers, their needs, and experiences, the speaker 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.  He will also highlight HTNG's new workgroup to expand and standardize the definitoin of customer profile, and how this will help hotels and vendors alike.

Micah Friedman, Director-Hospitality Industry, Oracle

Guest Entertainment:  Challenges & Opportunities


Few aspects of hotel technology have changed as fast in the past two years as guest entertainment. Where once guests looked for high quality content on their guest-room television sets, today they are just as likely to bring the content they want with them on their mobile device, or stream it from the Internet.  TV manufacturers are building Internet-ready TVs and trying to figure out whether and how they need to be adapted for the hotel room.  Should hotels invest in better content, in bandwidth for streaming content, or both?  And how does the role of the integrator change if they’re no longer the main provider of content?  This panel session will feature hoteliers, TV manufacturers, and integrators – all of the with strong opinions about the future.  You’ll come away with a lot of ideas, and a better understanding of the challenges we all face as the transition to digital TV continues.

Moderator: Richard Barnes, Editor-in-Chief, Cleverdis

Speakers:
Michael Zetterlund, CTO-R&D, Nordic Choice Hotels
Mark Rupert Read, Group IT Manager, Firmdale Hotels Plc
Robert Bartelds, Senior Product Manager, Philips Consumer Lifestyle
Edwin Nieuwenhuyse, European Business Head Retail, Hospitality & Education at Sony Professional Solutions Europe
Dr. Thomas DiGiacomo, Development Director, Swisscom
Roger Taylor, CEO, Quadriga Worldwide

Open Source Hospitality:  No Free Lunches


The Travel and Hospitality industry have always been forerunners in the use of technology, and our reliance on technology to deliver the best guest experience possible has never been greater. The session will cover a hotel management company's use of Open Source Software in daily operations, examine open source from a vendor and support perspective and offer a view on the future of open source in the hospitality industry.

Mark Regensberg, Director of IT, Extrabold Hotel Management

Workgroup Update - Software Forum


Hear what HTNG's workgroups from this forum are doing to improve integration for event RFPs, payment security, folio detail data extraction, and guest-room device control and monitoring.  There will also be some case studies of hotels using HTNG specifications to reduce complexity and cost of integration.  The session highlight recent work and developments, but will also include a brief overview of prior work for the benefit of first-time attendees.  Note that the Customer Profile workgroup will be discussed in the Customer Experience Management session, and the Secure Payments Framework workgroup will be discussed in the session on PCI compliance.

Yvette Vincent, Business IT Manager, Delaware North Companies
Alex Lee, Director of IT, International Operations, Hyatt Hotels Corporation
Michael Zetterlund, CTO - R&D, Nordic Choice Hotels
Laurent Cardot, Managing Director, Ariane Systems

Hotel IT Leadership Panel - No presentations materials were used

Using Hotel Technology to Save the Environment


Nordic Choice Hotels has always been at the forefront of energy efficiency in its hotels.  In recent years it has implemented numerous energy-saving measures based on technology, including some that required modifications to its PMS that have not been implemented at other hotel companies.  With energy being the second-largest controllable cost at most hotels, this session will provide you with practical ideas for using technology to reduce the carbon footprint of your operation, without inconveniencing guests or staff.

Michael Zetterlund, CTO-R&D, Nordic Choice Hotels

Closing Remarks