Washington, The American Hotel & Motel Association (AH&MA), along with its partners, is raising the profile of the Hospitality Industry Technology Integration Standards (HITIS) project through customized showcases at technology conferences and presentations at industry events, including EURHOTEC, HITEC, Hotel & Motel Management's Hotel Information & Technology Show, AH&MA's Annual Convention & Leadership Forum, the International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show, and the Lodging Conference '98. By informing owners, operators, and vendors how HITIS will save the hospitality industry dollars, reduce down time, and eliminate frustrations caused by incompatible software applications, the coalition hopes to garner more industry support.
In addition, end users and vendor volunteers are being sought for project sponsorships, technical committee work, and "beta" testing of draft standards. Now in its second year, HITIS has adopted a "common component/object oriented" methodology for the development of standards between disparate computerized systems used in the hospitality industry.
"Announcements regarding the massive development effort slated for HITIS this year and the need for more industry involvement have gone out to more than 300 companies involved in hospitality technology " said Rick Warner, vice president of hotel systems and information technology, Holiday Hospitality.
HITIS Advisory Committee Chairman Robert Elliott, AH&MA director of regulatory affairs, said, "I'm pleased with the tremendous progress the project members have made in the past six months. Since CynterCon was retained as our HITIS technical consultant, we are putting an infrastructure in place that includes uniform process guidelines and a second generation Web site."
In addition, a Certification, Compliance, and Maintenance sub-committee was created to develop a certification process, a plan for compliance testing, and a process for updating future standards.
Six technical committees have been formed to develop 22 technical standards affecting interfaces with property management systems and other hospitality systems in 1998:
Posting Devices (first meeting: March 20, beta testing: April 15-May 12, completion: June 11) Richard Moore, associate professor at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, is chairman of the committee.
Central Reservations and Yield Management Systems (first meeting: March 27, beta testing: May 7-June 4, completion: July 21) Bill Geoghegan, a HITIS consultant, is chairman of the committee.
Remote Devices (first meeting: April 14, beta testing: May 29-June 25, completion: August 11)
Payment Processing and Accounting Systems (first meeting: June 16, beta testing: August 7-September 3, completion: October 21)
Food, Beverage, and Retail Management Systems (first meeting: June 30, beta testing: August 13- September 10, completion: October 27)
Casino Management Systems (first meeting: July 28, beta testing: September 11-October 8, completion: November 20)
Prior to their initial meeting, committee members will receive copies of a research document, developed by CynterCon, that contains input from all technology and/or protocol vendors who want certain technologies addressed during the standards development process. This "Request For Technology" documentation can be accessed through Lodging magazine and the HITIS Web site (www.hitis.org).
The Web site, currently being developed by the Educational Institute of AH&MA, should be operational by early March 1998. It will feature HITIS' technical committee work, project updates, committee rosters and minutes, sponsorship hyperlinks, and white papers discussing subjects such as technology independence, HITIS and the use of legacy systems, and the year 2000 computer problem. In addition, a data dictionary will be posted on the site to ensure that the technical committees have a common set of data element descriptions. The dictionary will be updated as new terms are defined.
Current Prime sponsors include:
American Express
American Hotel Foundation
Cyntergy
Educational Institute of AH&MA
Holiday Hospitality
IBM Travel & Transportation Industries
Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals Micros/Fidelio
Microsoft
National Restaurant Association
R.J. Reynolds
Sabre Travel Network
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Current Principal sponsors include Hitachi Telecom and Ibertech, Inc., and Microscript Corp. is a Sustaining sponsor.
For additional information on HITIS, please contact Thierry Roch at troch@ahma.com. For specific technical information, please contact Bob Elliott at relliott@ahma.com or Joe Paiva at paivaj@cyntercon.com.
AH&MA, founded in 1910, is a federation of state lodging associations throughout the United States, with some 11,000 members worldwide, representing more than 1.4 million rooms. AH&MA provides operations, technical, educational, marketing, and communications services plus governmental affairs representation to the lodging industry.
