A Look Back on HTNG in 2018
Over the last 12 months, HTNG has continued to advance hospitality and move the industry forward. This piece will take a look at what has been produced by HTNG’s workgroups, the organization’s leadership/ecosystem and tight-knit events that all played a role in 2018 to get us to where the organization is present-day.
Workgroups
In HTNG’s workgroup cycle, groups form and assemble around an industry challenge, actively collaborate and work together to solve it, and then complete with a published deliverable. Throughout 2018, seven new workgroups were launched over the course of the year: NFC Contactless Payments, CBRS for Hospitality, API Registry (Beta Phase), GDPR (re-charter), Staff Alert Technology, Frictionless Check-in and Improving the Guest Wi-Fi Experience.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, thirteen deliverables were produced by workgroups during the year of 2018 — with many more still in the works.
The published documents are the:
• Blockchain for Hospitality White Paper
• Bulk Data API Specification
• Centralized Authentication Framework
• Citizen’s Broadband Radio Service White Paper
• Cloud Communications Framework
• CRM Centric Architecture White Paper
• EMV White Paper
• Fiber to the Room Cost Calculator
• GDPR White Paper
• IoT White Paper
• Payment Fraud Use Cases
• Payment Tokenization Specification
• Voice Interaction Framework
With eight to 12 workgroups active at any given time, there is definitely a substantial amount of time invested from our members. Over the course of the year, HTNG tracked more than 4,880 volunteer hours of overall workgroup teleconference participation.
Board Leadership
In April of 2018, HTNG welcomed a new Board President, Floor Bleeker, CIO of Mövenpick Group. Floor succeeded Mandarin Oriental’s Global CIO, Monika Nerger, who reached her term limit serving as HTNG’s President. Floor served on HTNG’s Board for over nine years and held the Treasurer position on the Executive Committee since 2015. Floor’s international hospitality experience spans across nearly two decades.
Multiple additions occurred over the course of the year to accelerate HTNG’s direction-setting body: Marwan Al Ali, Dubai Holdings; Thierry Guiraudios, CIO of Louvre Hotels; Brian Kirkland, CTO of Choice Hotels International; Dan Kornick, CIO of Lowes Hotel; and Yvetter Vincent, CTO of Delaware North.
HTNG’s Board of Governors are now responsible for over 3 million hotel guest rooms across the globe.
Strategic Pillars
HTNG introduced its Strategic Pillars back in February 2018 after spending dozens of brainstorming hours with members and the direction-setting body of the organization, its Board of Governors. These pillars accurately represent the overarching topics the hospitality industry is focusing on: Quality of the Guest Experience, Staff Recruiting and Engagement, Adopting Brand Standards, Modernizing Infrastructure, Security and Operational Excellence.
• Identified the six main topics on which our industry is focused
• Purpose of pillars
• Leadership chair and advisor for each pillar
• Mission of pillars
• Workgroups aligned to pillars
Global Strategy Team
• 28 Global Strategy Team calls with a total of 804 participants to rack up 968 call hours
Events
• 3 annual international conferences
• HT-NEXT
• Insight Summit North America
Looking forward to 2019…
• All we can say is we’ll be shaking things up!
• HTNG Hackathon
For more information, visit www.htng.org.