HTNG Completed Workgroups

Completed Workgroups

911 Location Communication

This group produced a document that provides hoteliers and hospitality technology professionals an overall understanding of the Kari's Law, as well as information adequate to help them ensure their hotels' MLTS are compliant with the laws. In addition, the document helps hoteliers select new MLTS solutions with confidence that they are compliant with these new laws, and capable of incorporating future-named technologies planned to meet the future requirements.

Above Property Systems

This workgroup created a framework of differentiating factors that define an above property solution that the industry should care about. One goal was to identify best practices for implementing systems above property. Another goal was for any two applications to be able to use the framework and determine how to architect interoperability between systems, at both the technical and business levels.

AI for Hospitality

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had a broad impact on technology, but what are the key considerations in hospitality? Building management, chatbots, revenue and network management are just a few examples. Will standardization, use case evaluation or a broad program of education help the hospitality industry take the plunge into AI? This group created a framework for hospitality AI strategies, including basic technology guidance and key deployment and implementation considerations. This will help hospitality companies accurately evaluate the solution marketplace and set the direction of AI adoption at their companies.

Attribute Modeling for the Distribution Ecosystem

The Distribution of Availability, Rates and Inventory (ARI) continues to be a challenge for hotels to provide seamless integration of ARI to distribution partners. How can hotels provide detailed ARI that enables all their revenue management strategies and allows a traveler to purchase their experience based on how the hotel chooses to merchandise their product? The industry is moving toward various types of selling that include attributes and experiences that affect how integration messaging would need to be handled. This workgroup has published a white paper explaining the value of attribute modeling and a series of use cases with correlating sample messages. This output demonstrates how the OpenTravel 2.0 Object Model can support the attribute-based pricing and selling to alleviate many existing challenges.

API Registry

There are a number of inefficiencies in the hospitality API space, including how to find potential technology partners whose products and/or services could add value to the hospitality industry's offerings. This group has created a registry of APIs in hospitality to make finding partners and integrations easier.

Architecture

Describes an architecture that supports the HTNG vision; provides guidance and direction to software vendors and hospitality companies in choosing and designing applications.

Back Office Integration

Standardize the handoff of financial data from property management systems (PMSs) and point of sale systems (POSs) to back-office systems and created a travel agent commissions specification.

Blockchain for Hospitality

The right form(s) of blockchain can improve or solve many challenges in the hospitality industry. To enable and accelerate its adoption in hospitality, this workgroup published a white paper along with a webinar series to educate the industry, identify relevant frameworks and develop a use-case for how select frameworks can be deployed.

Bulk Data Transfer

Create a specification defining a standard way to represent aggregated collections of messages as files. Then, those files will be transformed and processed in order to transfer and distribute them reliably between systems.

CBRS for Hospitality

Citizen's Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) is a set of shared and/or private communications that has regulatory approval in the United States. This represents a windfall of capabilities for hospitality companies, but hoteliers do not have enough information to evaluate this and adequately demonstrate value. The workgroup created a white paper with business models to enable corporate hoteliers to advise stakeholders on the value of CBRS deployments in their hotels.

Cellular Coverage

Addressed cellular phone coverage issues for hotels, by created a requirements document for an existing architecture (Remote Radio Head) and adapting it for indoor use by multiple Mobile Network Operators for in-building LTE coverage.

Centralized Authentication

Hotels have relied on the traditional splash page for their guests to access Wi-Fi and networking systems for years. Enterprise technologies (802.1x, 802.11u, etc.) have matured to allow hoteliers to use newly created or existing customer databases to centralize authentication and access. This workgroup will develop a unified and automatic identification and authentication mechanism for guests to use across multiple properties, rather than a single hotel

Cloud Communications

Hotel communications (messaging, voice, work orders, etc.) require separate systems that need, or do not support, specific integration requirements. These requirements result in the staff needing multiple devices (phone, radio, tablet, etc.), making it difficult to support. This group will focus on integration requirements, management and deployment need of a modern hotel in order to reduce costs and support requirements while increasing operational efficiency.

Converging AV and IT

Audio visual requirements, implementations and operations in hospitality are often an afterthought to hotel design and infrastructure planning. Ignoring modern technology requirements, capabilities and integration needs has led to cost overruns in the guest room, conference space and public areas of many hospitality venues. In conference spaces especially, little oversight is given to the changing requirements of meeting planners and their audiences, often resulting in lost revenue opportunities.

Customer Profile

Standardized the definition of customer profile, making data exchange easier, less expensive and less time-consuming. Standardized hand-off of information regarding loyalty programs and points/miles between CRM systems and loyalty management systems.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Digital and personal interaction with the guests throughout their journey, from pre- through post-stay, relies heavily on CRM centric architecture. Well-defined web services are needed to easily store and access information and then apply it to the guest. This workgroup recommends separating the CRM as a standalone application to go beyond the front desk and provide rich personal data while still integrating to effectively support legacy systems.

Device Control Integration

Simplified low-level communications among guest room devices (electrical controls, consumer electronics, HVAC< minibars, sages, door locks, etc.) by standardizing key aspects of inter-device messaging.

Digital Signage

Standardized the interface between catering and event management systems and digital signage systems.

Distribution Content Management

Standardized the exchange of descriptive and illustrative content among hotels, content management systems and distribution systems.

Door Lock Security

This workgroup mitigated door lock security issues by creating a set of testing procedures and valuation criteria, to be performed by a trusted third party capable of bench marking locking solutions against a well-defined list of standards.

Entertainment Device Control

The team produced a document to reduce confusion and additional remote controls in the guest room by leveraging previous work - the outcome of this group extended the Hospitality Profile for HDMI CEC x1.3 for compatibility in Asia, parts of Europe and South America.

 Event Notification

Creating updated version of the HTNG Event Notification spec to be compatible with the W2C WS-Eventing standard.

Folio Detail Exchange

Standardized the extraction of folio line-item detail from PMSs, for use by VAT recovery, loyalty, expense reporting and analytical programs.

Food & Beverage Ordering

Standardized the exchange of menu and order information between a Point-of-Sale System and a system managing a user interface (e.g. on a TV, tablet or website) through which a guest can order food and beverage.

 Frictionless Check-In

This group identified existing products and created a new/enhanced product specification that can be included in standard operating procedures that addresses the security risks of the bypass-front-desk check-in.

Future Looking

Produced a white paper in 2005 regarding the future of guest room technology.

GDPR for Hospitality

This workgroup built upon the previously created white paper and self-assessment tests to provide best practices to implement and prioritize the changes necessary to comply with the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The workgroup created operating procedures for front line staff to address GDPR-related inquiries from guests, as well as best practices, contractual guidance and business process data flows. These outcomes will help hospitality companies quickly address guest requests and reduce the risk and uncertainties associated with GDPR's broad implications.

Global Privacy Regulations

As HTNG has already published documentation and resources on the European Union's (EU's) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this workgroup focused on other important regional privacy regulations organizations need to abide by such as (but not limited to) the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Privacy Law (LGPD) in Brazil.

Guest & Room Status Messaging

Standardized interaction between PMSs and guest room devices, including provisioning and customization instructions, acknowledgement of correct provisions and de-provisioning.

Guest Room Entertainment

Guest entertainment in hospitality has rapidly evolved from the single stream broadcast, cable or satellite, networks to a complex, sophisticated a-la-cart ecosystem of suppliers, content providers and services that have direct access to consumers. As a result, planning an ideal guest entertainment experience requires constant re-evaluation, changes in strategy and investments that leave brands, owners and ultimately guests frustrated.

Hosted Entertainment Content Delivery Solutions

Identified the technical challenges for hotels to deploy entertainment systems in a hosted model, with little or no on-premises equipment.

Host Payment Capture Systems

Designed solutions and standards for hosted capturing and processing of credit card information, with secure application of the payment information back to hotelier systems.

Hotel Systems Dashboard

This workgroup defined the requirements for a comprehensive dashboard system, including levels of information - ranging from high-level system information to detailed technical data that is required to troubleshoot issues with hotel systems. The dashboard also collected long-term data to enable hotels to forecast and take appropriate action. The solution is open to allow any networked system to interface/integrate with the dashboard.

 Hotel Technology Renovations Project Management

This workgroup completed a best practice for hotel technology project management. This best practices document ensures that hotel renovations minimize delays due to technology upgrades, guarantees projects are completed within budget and creates a technology plan for the hotel space.

Hybrid Meetings and Events

The meetings and events space has historically drawn a vast amount of business for the hotel industry, but the COVID-19 pandemic has detrimentally evaporated both business and leisure travel throughout 2020 and up until now. This group helped expedite the return to recovery by creating a playbook to help hospitality companies adapt to the short-term and long-term effects of the pandemic, both regarding business and leisure events. This output enabled hotels to support new types of meetings that expand beyond the traditional in-person event space, utilizing virtual meeting technology and health management techniques that aided in returning hotels to prior meeting and event profitability.

Identity Compliance Service

Attempted to address management of user rights across multiple systems. This workgroup did not produce meaningful deliverables and was subsequently disbanded.

Improving the Guest Wi-Fi Experience

Hospitality companies do not have an accurate, consistent, nor objective measure of the guest Wi-Fi quality of experience (QoE). This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to utilize real-time data and/or historical analysis to evaluate the guest Wi-Fi experience. This workgroup developed a common methodology and recommendations to define and measure key performance metrics utilizing real-time and/or historical data to give insight into, and ultimately predict the guest Wi-Fi QoE.

Indoor Air Quality

As a result of the pandemic, indoor air quality measures and related technology, products and performance may become table stakes in hospitality companies. This workgroup created a whitepaper to help companies evaluate the potential risks, discover the benefits around the healthy building movement, assist in defining hotel energy efficiency and explore implementation opportunities so that customers and staff are confident in the return to work, meetings and events, hotel rooms and common spaces.

Intelligent Guest Room

This workgroup created a common framework for communicating with systems that control guest room devices, enabling hotels to monitor device health and help ensure that hotels, rather than guests, can be the first to discover device malfunctions. The group's output did not extend the framework to simplify communications with and between individual guest room devices.

 Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) poses challenges for hospitality executives to determine which solutions offer tangible benefits, no unnecessary complexity, and are compatible with existing solutions. This workgroup addressed this challenge by publishing documents and guidelines for successful IoT network design, communication protocols, integration and security concerns including a reference architecture for common hospitality IoT use cases. These allow hoteliers to better select, implement and support the IoT solution which best meets the needs of the brand, the hotel and the guest.

Kiosk Integration

Standardized interfaces for self check-in and check-out functionality between kiosks (and other self-service devices) and property management systems.

Lightweight Messaging

This workgroup created a JSON framework that reflects existing HTNG & OpenTravel Specifications that selectively allow the client to return a specified set of data elements, and provide implementation standards (such as URI standards, query parameter standards, HTNG SOAP header info via HTTP and REST/JSON RPC, etc.) for accessing the framework.

Mobile Device ID and Authentication

Building on recent enhancement to 802.11x standards, this group is working to devise a standard process for registering a device once within a hotel or brand so the device and its user can be recognized automatically when it is in range of any access point.

 New Builds

Develop comprehensive architectural and design guidelines as well as commissioning check lists that will ensure that proper technologies can be deployed when the building is commissioned. The workgroup would then socialize those guidelines with the architects, consultants and engineers that design hotels. Design guidelines were completed in Q2 2016.

Next Generation Distribution Messaging

HTNG and The OpenTravel Alliance are mainstays of hotel and travel messaging and offer widely adopted message standards for operations and bookings across a diverse ecosystem. This workgroup will identify and examine both current open source and propriety standards, including OpenTravel's 2.0 Object Model and IATA's New Distribution Capability (NDC). The group will offer a viewpoint with potential benefits, impacts and alignment opportunities.

Next Generation Infrastructure

This group created a series of best practice documents and webinars on how to effectively deliver and deploy a fiber network in a hotel. Deliverables included and introduction to fiber and Passive Optical Network (PON) technology and design guides for new builds and retrofits. The group is now documenting case studies and power deployment scenarios.

NFC Contactless Payments

Accepting Mobile NFC Payments such as Apple Pay, Google Wallet or Samsung Pay for hotel room reservations have not been possible due to complex scenarios with authorizations and post-stay settlements. This workgroup will identify the critical components in payment solutions for the hospitality industry and how they may need to be updated to accommodate new payment frameworks.

 Open Data Exchange

Developed a standardized approach for the exchange of unstructured data between systems and generic data "push" and "pull" models.

Open Payments Alliance (OPA) Standards

The complexity of the billion-dollar travel & hospitality business-to-business (B2B) payment ecosystem has led to widespread insecure and legacy systems adoption across the distribution landscape. The Open Payment Alliance (OPA) was created to solve these issues, but software standards, business rules and best practices are needed to increase adoption and scale the solution across hundreds of payment providers. Any stakeholder in the travel and hospitality B2B payment process is encouraged to sign up.

Optimizing Relationships Between Marketing and IT

The goal of this workgroup is to help organizations improve the relationship between their commercial technologies and IT departments to operate more efficiently. With new guest priorities and in many cases, less resources, how and what information needs to be shared across the organization that will help optimize the relationship between these two groups?

Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2)

The Payment Services Directive (PSD v2, Directive (EU) 2015/2366) is a new set of laws focused on banking and payment processes in the European Union. As a result, strong customer authentication and certain types of technology processes must be adopted by many industries, including hospitality. This regulation may require significant changes in payment processing, implementation and security practices in hotels and their partners. This group will evaluate operational and technical requirements of PSD2, including strong customer authentication, 3DS adoption and more.

Payment Systems & Data Security

Standardized secure processing for credit card transactions between hotel systems and payment processing gateways, using a secure data proxy (tokenization) approach.

Personal Area Networks

The team documented the network requirements and best practices need to replicate the home network environment in the hotel. This enables common consumer devices (meant for the home network) to be used by guests on the hotel's network, enabling common use case scenarios such as displaying guest-based content on the hotel-owned television.

 Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

The team began by defining what PII means within the hospitality industry. The group the created principles and corresponding rationale for protecting guest data, a code of conduct in which an organization and its vendors will abide by. Finally, the group produced a self-assessment test to determine how well a given organization is protecting the personal information of their guests. This leads to the eventual standard that all within the industry will perform to. A later output will focus on protecting personal information of staff and vendors.

Point of Sale

Enhance the HTNG basic point-of-sale interface to achieve tighter integration for such processes as check zoom and end-of-day processing, and to improve the guest lookup facility.

Product Distribution

Standardized reservation delivery, rate control, availability control, group synchronization, statistics handoff and other functions necessary for distribution processing.

 Property Web Services

Developed a set of Web Services designed to promote inter-operability and information exchange among systems that service the needs of hotel properties.

Protocol & Message Transport

Provides the "plumbing" layer of connectivity for all HTNG messages, known as the HTNG Web Services Framework (WSF), which enables two systems to reliably exchange any XML messages (HTNG or proprietary), vastly simplifying the implementation of interfaces, including a publish-and-subscribe eventing model.

Reference Architecture

Created reference architectures for the hospitality industry including business, application and data architectures.

 Scalable Cellular Service

This group will develop technology overviews for new and emerging technologies such as enterprise scale small cells and Wi-Fi calling, evaluate deployment and use cases, and select business models that enable hotels of all sizes to ensure excellent cellular reception in their hotels.

Single Guest Itinerary

Standardized the synchronization of customer profiles, itineraries and folio posting across PMS and activity systems to provide a cooperative experience for hotel guests, as well as for staff working with disparate systems such as Property Management, Spa, Golf, Concierge, Dining, Ski and other activity systems.

Software Resource Team

The Software Resource Team offers a space to share and learn about emerging issues from other top software practitioners. This group explores and discuss new technologies theoretically and practically. They also research open questions without the usual workgroup requirement or constraints of committing to an end result. Deliverables include educational webinars, white papers, industry frameworks, best practice documents and creating new software workgroups.

 Staff Alert Technology

This group identified staff alert solution types, recommended best practices and recommended opportunities to integrate emerging solutions with other solutions used either within properties, by public agencies, or both. The publications of this group included a Staff Alert Technology Buyer's Guide as well as a comparison matrix of staff alert solutions.

Travel Safe

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic how can we build consumer confidence that lodging is safe? Changing consumer behavior and expectations and driving new safety and health measures. From contactless access and sanitation to new search criteria and ratings, hotel distribution content is even more critical to build consumer confidence.

Unique Hospitality Identifier

Unique Hospitality Identifiers (UHI) can identify and provide information about legal entities within the hospitality industry. In technical terms, a UHI is a random code that any entity (or initially just hotels, or any arbitrary segment of travel or hospitality) within the hospitality industry can register for. UHIs can be linked together to identify relationships such as a hotel with its franchise, chain and member associations. Once registered, any other entity in the industry can query and use the UHI codes to exchange information about the entity and transactions in which they might be involved.

Virtual Credit Cards

Standardize and systematize the identification and business rules for processing virtual credits cards and other non-traditional payments.

Voice Communications Solutions

Developed a specification for an IP PBX and hospitality SIP handset.

 Voice Interaction Framework

While screenless voice-based devices are gaining adoption in the home, only ~1% of traveling consumers have personal experiences with these emerging devices and there is limited time for guests to learn this new technology. To solve the issues of inconsistency, this group will develop a framework of use cases and related voice commands for the guest room.

Wireless Power

Guests have become frustrated as hotels struggle to keep up with the various charging requirements that customers have become to expect. While once an evolving wireless charging technology, Qi-enabled charging devices have become the de facto standard in consumer electronics devices (especially since recent Apple devices have started to support Qi). This group will create RFP guidance to educate hospitality corporate IT personnel, ultimately arming them with the information they need.