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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.  

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