New guestroom technology and point-of-sale interfaces available, as well as expanded customer profile and distribution specs

CHICAGO (October 28, 2012) – Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) today announced the release of new specifications that add functionality across a range of hotel systems and operations, including Point of Sale, distribution, marketing, loyalty, and guest-room technology management.

• Point of Sale Version 1.0 – A new, modern standard enhances functionality and reliability of the traditional PMS-POS interface, including lookup and verification of guests or membership (club) accounts, charge posting and retrieval of charge-posting details.
• Customer Profile Version 2.0 –Significant updates have been made to Version 1.0 to add support for vouchers associated with a profile (such as free nights from loyalty programs), to facilitate loyalty program enrollment, to support social media, and to track marketing offers.
• Intelligent Guest Room Version 1.0 – This new specification allows hotel systems to verify proper functioning of guest room devices and to receive automatic notification messages when problems occur.
• Product Distribution - Shop/Book Version 2.0 – Updated specifications now allow for real-time shopping and booking of preconfigured and dynamic packages.

These new and updated standards result from the combined effort of nearly 80 hotel companies and technology service providers over the past six months.

Technologists interested in more information about any of HTNG’s efforts around standards, best practices and new product development should visit http://htng.org/workgroups.

The specifications are available to the public at the links above, and certification will be available for vendor product shortly. By requiring HTNG Certified interfaces from their vendors, hotels can reduce the time and risk of interfaces today, while improving flexibility and minimizing long-term cost of ownership and management of complex interfaces as various connected systems are replaced in future years.