Welcome Remarks

HTNG Update

This session will provide an overview of HTNG's successes and challenges in the past year, as well as insights into upcoming intiatives. It will also include a brief overview of the Vendor Advisory Council, which now represents the vendor perspective to the HTNG Board of Governors, and which is working to improve alignment between the organizations and the vendor community that supports it.

Micah Friedman, Chair, HTNG Vendor Advisory Council; Director - Hospitality Industry, Oracle Travel, Transportation & Hospitality Industry Business Unit
Douglas Rice, Executive VP & CEO, HTNG

We’re Moving to the Cloud: Now What?

So you’ve decided that your IT future will be cloudy. But you need to be clear: how will it work? Private clouds or public? How do you manage bits of transactions being processed in different, often unknown places? How should you architect it so you can align to your SLA goals? How should you choose and manage cloud providers? Our speaker will draw on experience across multiple cloud ecosystems to help you find the right answers.

Pontus Noren, Director & Co-Founder, Cloudreach Limited

Coffee Break

New Approaches to Meeting Bandwidth Demand

Bandwidth demand from guests continues doubling every year, with no end in sight, and hotels struggle to meet guests' expectations without spending a fortune on infrastructure that may only meet the needs for a year or two. This session will explore real-life experience of three "fiber pioneers," who have learned, and are continuing to learn, important lessons about different options for using fiber optic cable, alone or in combination with traditional copper cable, to achieve a more future-proof design at less cost.

John Grew, Hospitality Communications Consultant, Spartan Communications
Stefan Bader, Director of Hotel Technology, Kempinski Hotels
David Heckaman, Vice President-IT, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
Greg Dawes, Senior Systems Engineer, Zhone Technologies

Lunch

Evolving Threats & Best Practices for Payment Security in Hospitality

Foregenix will provide an overview of their experiences over the past 4 years in performing account data compromise (ADC) investigations across the hospitality sector. The session will cover the evolving threat landscape; the attack vectors; the factors that exacerbated the crime; best practices that would have mitigated the unfortunate event; and a case study of an ADC event. The session will provide a summary of the evolving landscape and practical advice on mitigating the risk through the use of scope reduction, and introduce innovative tools and initiatives, including an overview of the new HTNG Security Framework provided by John Bell from Marriott International.

Benj Hosack, Director, Foregenix
John Bell, Enterprise Architect, Marriott International

IT Support for the Changing World of Search

Few hotel distribution executives would disagree with the notion that innovations in search, led in large part by Google, have dramatically changed the way that consumers select hotels. Recent changes in Google Maps and the positioning of Hotel Finder create new challenges and opportunities for both brand.com and OTA websites, as hotels attempt to optimize their geolocation presence. This esteemed panel of distribution executives will explain the challenges they face, with particular emphasis on the IT support needed to ensure the competitive positioning of complex pricing structures across this platform.

Coffee Break

Finding Value in Boring Data

Guest folio data sounds boring, but your Finance, Marketing and Operational Directors can get excited about the revenue opportunities and cost savings it can provide. Folio data is more accessible than ever before, and can drive value through guest services, through faster payment from corporate and wholesale accounts via e-invoicing, and by making it easy for guests to avoid paying VAT. Find out how new HTNG standards are being applied to make money from boring data.

Stephen Burke, CTO, Taxeo
Mark Rupert Read, Group IT Manager, Firmdale Hotels

Mobilizing the End-to-End Hotel Experience

Where should hotels focus their investment in mobile? Given the vast mobile ecosystem, what is the right mobile infrastructure hotels should have in place and how can hotels leverage mobile to enhance their bottom line? In this session we will explore the entire mobile ecosystem for hotels, discuss the best mobile architecture to put in place, how best to integrate with hotels’ existing systems, how to build apps that have the most value for guests, hotel staff and the entire hotel chain and how mobile should support new revenue initiatives, new trends such as same day hotel room bookings and the customer of the future.

Gerry Samuels, Founder & CEO, Mobile Travel Technologies, Ltd.

Software Forum Update

This session will provide a high level overview of HTNG efforts in software standards and best practices for data security, and point you to more detailed resources for those efforts that can help YOUR business.

Yvette Vincent, Director of Information Systems, Delaware North Companies,
John Bell, Enterpriese Architect, Marriott International
Micah Friedman, Director - Hospitality Industry, Oracle Travel, Transportation & Hospitality Industry Business Unit
Robin Coker, Manager PMS Development, Infor
Others TBA

Infrastructure and Device Forum Update

HTNG's workgroups have produced a large amount of new value for members in terms of best practices, design guidelines, case studies, webinars, and other resources. This session will provide a high level overview of efforts in infrastructure, mobile device support, and networking, and point you to more detailed resources for those efforts that can help YOUR business..

Bryan Hammer, Director of IT, EAME, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide
Richard Wagner, Director of Emerging Technologies, Marriott International
Michael Zetterlund, Product Management Director, Swisscom

The Challenge of Supporting Bring-Your-Own-Content

As traditional content sources become less appealing to modern guests, more and more of them are bringing their own content into hotel rooms. Rather than leave guests to watch on a tablet, smartphone or laptop, how can hotels support a richer in-room experience? This session will look at modern trends in in-room entertainment technology and focus on the opportunities and challenges in wireless display technologies, and the timelines over which some of the promises may be realized.

Nick Price, CEO, NetSys Technology

Coffee Break

Innovative Uses of Technology in Hotels

Winners of the first Hotelier Technology Innovation contest (organized by HTNG and Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne) will be announced, and representatives from each company will make short presentations describing their winning entries.

Ian Millar, Deputy Director, INTEHL, Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne
Competition Winners, TBA on site

Closing Remarks