HTNG's Business Analytics Workgroup Adds Point of Sale to its Collection of Messages

HTNG's Business Analytics Transactional Extract (BATE) Workgroup publishes the second phase of its specification, adding point of sale to the previous messaging which includes financial transactions, reservation data and group blocks.

There are many methods for extracting aggregated transactional data, but prior to HTNG's BATE group, no standards existed to extract raw, detailed transactional data from hospitality business systems to perform business analytics. The BATE Workgroup is changing this with the creation of a specification to address the lack of consistency in exporting valuable data from hotel systems.

The group first focused on the high demand in messaging around financial transactions, reservation data and group blocks. The second phase published now includes point of sale messaging for the front and back of house. The team is currently determining their focus for the next phase, which will tackle extracting additional data out of a property management system (PMS).

This document was written for anyone considering to use analytics in a hospitality context. For revenue managers and senior management who make data-driven decisions, this specification will help clarify what data points can be used in those analyses. For technology vendors that need to interface with analytics systems, conforming with the standards set forth in the specification will allow for easier interfaces with analytics systems. For technology professionals who work on the analytics platforms themselves, this specification will help them know what to expect in hospitality.

HTNG's BATE Workgroup was led by Co-chairs Marshall Knauf, product manager at Cloudbeds and Iris Steinmetz, senior director of operations EMEA at Hospitality & Retail Systems (HRS).

The second phase of the Business Analytics Transactional Extract specification can be found here.