NEW YORK? A general session panel comprised of hospitality industry executives will kick off the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC), which takes place at the Dallas Convention Center June 20-22. Successes, mistakes and where the industry should be in terms of technology are some of the topics the interactive session will include. Panelists are Danny Hudson, vp/distribution systems for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide; Michael Kistner, senior vp/hotel information systems for Cendant Corp.; and Tom Murphy, CIO for Royal Caribbean Cruises. Jay Walker, founder/vice chairman of Priceline.com, meanwhile, will present a session entitled ?Opportunities in the New Economy? that same day. Fifty educational sessions will be presented during the show. ?Designing the Hotel Room of the Future? will use cutting-edge audience-response technology to instantly gather the opinions from session attendees. Attendees will use wireless keypads to input their answers to approximately 50 questions dealing with future trends for property and guestroom amenities. Responses will be announced during the session and a post-session report will be produced and published. The audience response technology will also be used for a short survey during Thursday?s general session, ?High Speed Into the Future.? Sessions will cover: e-commerce, website development, a HITIS update and a session on HFTP?s joint research project, ?Hospitality 2000: The Capital.? Concurrent sessions include, among other topics, coverage on systems integration, data security, remote sales force automation, e-procurement, virtual training and on-line eduction and customer relationship management. HITEC officials said that the show this year has a record 633 booths representing 270 companies and all told, after 34 additional booths are added, will reflect a 24% increase over last year?s show. More than 5,500 attendees are expected to visit this year?s show.
