Here's a sampling of some technologies that stood out at HITEC 2008, this year's incarnation of the hotel industry's leading technology show, held in Austin, Texas.

The top five technologies, as voted on by HITEC attendees:

Elfiq Networks' Link Load Balancer/ Bandwidth management becomes a bigger concern each year, as bandwidth-hogging applications become increasingly prevalent. Elfiq enables hoteliers to allocate bandwidth based on level of importance, allocating reserved bandwidth to critical

LodgeNet Interactive Media And Connectivity/ Guestroom entertainment leader LodgeNet unveiled a suite of new media and connectivity products at HITEC. Among the new offerings are VOD Basic, a more economical digital video-on-demand solution, and IPTV Advanced, an IP-based HD video-on-demand product. LodgeNet also rolled out the HD-compatible Free-to-Guest Basic and the HD Built-In Program, in which LodgeNet receivers are built directly into the TVs.

Micros Systems' Opera PMS/ Micros is perhaps the hospitality industry's most recognizable tech vendor, so maybe name recognition explains its presence on the list of HITEC's favorites. The company did not announce any major news this year, aside from a brand-wide implementation of Opera by Omni Hotels.

Nintendo's Wii For Hotels/ The Wii video game console was seemingly everywhere at HITEC, from the futuristic model Guestroom 2010 to about a half-dozen booths using the technology to draw in passersby. Nintendo has released a hotels-specific version of Wii that does not require disks and which updates its games library automatically via Wi-Fi.

Sony Electronics/ Not to be outdone by its rivals at Nintendo, Sony put its PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable video game consoles on display. Like Micros, it is a little unclear exactly what piqued voters' interest, since no major news was announced and no new products were unveiled. Sony did have a pretty cool-looking island booth, though.

Some other technologies that garnered buzz in Austin:

eTelemetry's Notify/ Notify is a nifty device that manages guest Internet access speeds, giving hoteliers an option for monetizing free Wi-Fi. Notify lets hoteliers offer bandwidth tiers and market guest services with messages embedded into browsers. Hoteliers may invite bandwidth-intensive users to pay a fee for extra allocation, thereby making guests happy with the free Wi-Fi they desire while also retaining it as a revenue center and keeping the network from crashing due to bandwidth overload.

Passkey's Group Campaigns/ Group Campaigns is an e-mail marketing platform designed specifically for hotel meetings and events, allowing hotels to communicate with event attendees via professional e-mail campaigns. Each e-mail template is configured for a specific purpose and can be customized with branding and content. The templates can be programmed to send at certain times and under specified conditions.

IDeaS Revenue Optimization's IDeaShare/ IDeaS is offering an online platform known as IDeaShare, which uses social networking as a basis for improving its product functionality. The site lets IDeaS hotel clients promote (or demote) Web articles to get them increased exposure. Users can post public suggestions on how to improve IDeaS product functionality—popular items are bumped up by the community, and all the while other users can weigh in with their thoughts on the topic. l

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