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CHICAGO (May 23, 2013) – Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG), the premier technology solutions association in the hospitality industry, today announced a series of specifications that help hotels improve guest satisfaction and front-office efficiency. The specifications create standard ways for hotels to know immediately if an in-room device malfunctions, to ensure that customer service issues are known across the property and allow guest folio payment transactions to be processed even if the PMS system is down.

"These specifications will enable better guest service by helping minimize guest exposure to defective or temporarily unavailable systems, and with the improved efficiency they will provide, they are a powerful addition to our suite of industry standards for hotels," said Douglas Rice, Executive Vice President & CEO of HTNG. "Hotels can now implement these specifications within their own systems, and encourage their vendor partners to do so as well, in order to recognize the benefits."

Some of the ways that hotels can improve guest service from these specifications are:

• Finding malfunctioning guest room devices before the guest is inconvenienced – Guest room devices can now provide updates about their operational status. If a device fails, or reports an issue within the guest room, the hotel PMS system can know immediately. Hotel staff can then address the issue, ideally before the guest discovers the problem. The Intelligent Guest Room Version 2.0 specification adds centralized registration and automatic discovery of in-room devices to the original specification.
• Enhance guest service by sharing service issues across systems – If a guest experiences a service issue, you can now easily share that status with other management and operational systems, so that personnel can respond appropriately. New features include easy retrieval of stay history, as well as easier ability of any hotel system to be able to create, modify or view customer service issues. (Applicable specification: Customer Profile Specification Version 3.0)
• More effective payment systems – Point-of-Sale charges can now be seamlessly made to guest folios even when the connection to the property management system is unavailable. Once connectivity has been re-established, the property management and payment systems can automatically resolve any outstanding transactions. Another new feature of the Point of Sale Version 2.0 specification reduces night-audit effort by automating end-of-day reconciliation.

Minor enhancements are also available for specifications that cover Guest Folio Systems as well Product Distribution Availability .

These new and updated standards result from the combined effort of nearly 80 hotel companies and technology service providers over the past six months. Hoteliers 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 HTNG certification program includes the new specifications. Companies interested in seeking certification to these specifications can access the appropriate documents now to begin the certification process. By requiring HTNG Certified interfaces from their vendors, hotels can reduce the time to deploy new interfaces as well as reducing the risk of using those new interfaces today, while improving flexibility and minimizing long-term cost of ownership and management of complex interfaces in the future.

Contact
Bill Fallon
Executive Vice President, Keating and Co.
Phone: 212 925 6900
Mobile: 973 768 6764
Email: bfallon@keatingco.com

Organization
Hospitality Technology Next Generation (HTNG) - AHLA
www.ahla.com/htng
1250 Eye Street N.W., Suite 1100
USA - Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 1 202 289 3100
Email: ewilson@ahla.com

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