PHILADELPHIA, PA & CHICAGO, IL - June 6, 2007 – With multi-media and interactivity becoming key to marketing messaging and customer service and the ability for printed messages and displays to impact consumers waning, digital signage has exploded in the hospitality and retail industries. In fact, "indoor venues" such as hotels are the second largest market for digital signage with sales in this area exceeding $2 billion in 2006. But while digital signage has solved the problem of how to make messaging more visually appealing and more flexible, it still falls short in regard to meeting consumers' preferences for more personalized, one-to-one information. Now, however, a consortium of industry leaders has created a solution that addresses that shortcoming and takes digital signage to a new level in value, utility and its ability to drive revenue and guest satisfaction scores by creating the first-ever digital signs that automatically adapt their messaging to the guest's interests.

Led by The IDT Group, the hospitality industry's leading guest database and CRM provider, and AVT Communique', the leading hospitality audio/visual display services provider, this new solution links the digital display with a robust customer database that pulls information from a hotel's various systems and aggregates this data to create an in-depth profile of each guest. Using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology to identify the guest when they approach the display, the sign then leverage that database information to dynamically adjusts its content to present either a promotional advertisement for a hotel service or outlet (such as a Spa treatment, particular restaurant, etc.) that specifically matches the guests interests, or to bring up specific personal hotel and travel information for the guest including their meeting agenda, tee times, reservations, flight status, weather back home and more.

John Greening, Professor at the Medill Graduate School of Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University and a former Executive Vice President of the Global Ad Agency DDB Chicago notes that one of the biggest challenges in advertising and marketing today are that modern consumers are both "time-challenged" and "attention-challenged." With such an overwhelming number of mediums competing to reach them, the key to getting their attention is to give them something that they're interested in and to make it relevant, original and useful and for the message itself to not just be noise, but to deliver value itself, Greenberg said.

The challenge to implementing this concept, however, lies in the fact that "interests" are different for each viewer and what is relevant to one consumer or guest may be completely irrelevant for another. Working in conjunction with NEC for state-of-the-art display units and Omnivex for robust content management software, IDT and AVT have bridged this gap by using data-mining, business intelligence and database services to identify what is of interest to each guest, recognizing which guest is where via RFID, and matching the guest profile and interests to the sign in the proximity of that guest on a real-time basis.

"Hotels are investing heavily in digital signage and they have to focus on maximizing the value of theses signs to get the most out of this sizeable investment," said IDT President Harry Rivkin. "As attractive as digital signage is, for it to be effective, it still needs to deliver the right message to the right guest at the right time, otherwise the guest just considers it one more piece of ‘noise." Bob Tomkyo, President of AVT Communique', echoed Rivkin's comments and added that "By matching messages with guests interests, it allows each sign to make maximum advantage of the narrowing viewing time by the guest and substantially increases the likelihood that the signage will improve guest service scores and RevPAR."

IDT and AVT Communique' will be demonstrating this unique digital signage application at HITEC, June 25-28 in Orlando, in Booth # 935.

About IDT Group

The IDT Group is hospitality CRM services company that helps hotels to increase guest spend, improve guest satisfaction scores and decrease operational and marketing costs by gathering information on guests from various systems – such as PMS, point of sale, sales and catering, club management, spa, and other applications to create a concise single view of the guest, including their history, profile, lifetime value and preferences as well as projections of their other likely interests. Along with this consolidated guest database, IDT provides services to leverage this information including robust reports, direct and e-marketing, data mining, e-communications and more that support marketing, sales, revenue management, and operations. The IDT Group is the leader in the hospitality industry's growing commitment to integrate operational systems - and the data locked within them - by providing solutions that bridge the gap between "silos" and exploit the profit potential of untapped information assets.

About AVT Communiqué

AVT Communiqué focuses on helping hotels to effectively communicate audibly, visually and directionally via Digital Signage Solutions and Virtual Menu Tablets as well as permanent Audio, Lighting and Video Installations. AVT Communiqué is a division of Hospitality Partners, a consortium of seven hospitality services companies that provide innovative solutions to their hotel partners' technology needs and handles every aspect of event planning and production for hotel customers, all with the highest level of service.