"Given all the bad news in the industry, attendees at this year's HTNG conference were delighted to see evidence of tremendous progress by HTNG's workgroups in addressing key industry interoperability challenges -- and in particular, to see the number of actual field implementations of HTNG solutions and standards in hotels," said Douglas Rice, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of HTNG. "All of the credit, however, goes to the tireless efforts of our volunteers from the hotel, vendor, and consulting community, who devoted thousands of hours to the cause during the year. It is only fitting that our industry should recognize the most significant contributions by our volunteers - people who tried to make a difference, and succeeded."

Directors' Leadership Award

The top annual award, the HTNG Directors' Leadership Award, is bestowed annually by the HTNG board of directors. The HTNG board consists of Chief Information Officers and other top IT executives from 13 hotel companies from around the world, including most of the major brands. Each year, one or two HTNG members are recognized for their outstanding contributions to advancing the state of hospitality technology, typically through extensive and effective volunteer efforts within HTNG's focused workgroups.

For 2008, the Directors' Leadership Award was presented to Lew J. Harasymiw, Esq., Director of Interface Solutions at SynXis; and to Christopher M. Laffoon, Software Engineer at IBM Corporation.

Five-Year Technical Leadership Award

A special five-year technical leadership award was also presented to Sophie Grigg, Chief Operating Officer of Lorica Solutions, in recognition of significant and ongoing contributions over the entire five-year period since the formation of HTNG's first workgroup in December, 2003. Grigg was one of the principal architects of HTNG's approach to web services protocol and message transport. Based on standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), this framework-which is used in conjunction with all HTNG web-service message standards-vastly reduced the time required for developers to build interfaces, and has contributed to significant cost reductions and greater agility for hotel companies and technology vendors alike. While serving as Vice President of Research and Development at PAR Springer-Miller Systems, Grigg also contributed to the development of several of the HTNG message standards in the Property Web Services and Property/Distribution Solution workgroups, and spearheaded her company's effort to be the first to certify not just to one, but to both sets of specifications. Since joining Lorica Solutions in 2008, she has also been a key contributor to new HTNG efforts to standardize complex interfaces with guestroom control devices.

Other Awards

HTNG also recognized the contributions of several other individuals to the success of HTNG's workgroups during 2008, including:

• John Bell, Enterprise Architect at Marriott International, for his project management skills as chair of the Reference Architecture team within the HTNG Architecture workgroup
• David Blancard, Architect, Distribution Technology at Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, as chair of the HTNG Property/Distribution Solution workgroup, for best overall progress by a workgroup during 2008
• Robin Coker, Software Engineer at Amadeus Hospitality, as the best overall team player for her contributions to the Property/Distribution Solution workgroup
• Bill Euler, President of Professional Accounting Systems, Inc. (PAS), for his project management of the Back Office interface team within the HTNG Property Web Services workgroup
• Monika Nerger, Vice President-The Americas for Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, and Neil Schubert, Vice President-IT Strategy for Marriott International, as "Master Cat Herders" for their leadership of HTNG's In-Room Technology Workgroup, which now counts more than 150 senior-level participants from 69 companies; and
• Greg Pasetta, President and Chief Operating Officer at Tangerine Global, for the best creative contribution, in recognition of short-subject videos produced for the In-Room Technology workgroup.

About Hotel Technology Next Generation

The premier technology solutions association in the hospitality industry, HTNG is a self-funded, non-profit organization with members from hotel and hospitality companies, technology vendors to hospitality, and other industry members including consultants, media, and academic experts. HTNG's members participate in focused workgroups to bring to market open solution sets addressing specific business problems. HTNG fosters the selection and adoption of existing open standards. Where necessary, it also develops new open standards to meet the needs of the global hospitality industry.

Membership in HTNG is open to hotel and hospitality companies, technology vendors to hospitality, consultants, academics, press and others. Currently more than 400 corporate and individual members from across this spectrum, including most of the world's leading hotel companies and technology vendors, are active HTNG participants. Workgroup proceedings, drafts, and specifications are published for all HTNG members as soon as they are created, encouraging rapid and broad adoption. Specifications are released to the public domain as they are ratified by the workgroup. For more information, visit www.htng.org.