The International Hotel & Restaurant Association and Weather Decision Technologies
Partner to Provide Private Local Weather Services to Worldwide Membership
Dr. Ghassan AIDI President of The International Hotel & Restaurant Association (IH&RA), based in Geneva, Switzerland is pleased to announce a new partnership with Weather Decision Technologies (WDT) based in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area, the world’s leader in global weather services. The agreement provides for innovative online, television, and local marine weather products to be made available to the global hotel and restaurant industry.
The partnership agreement includes the provision of iMap(R) Interactive Weather content, which may be embedded in the websites of any participating IH&RA member and centered on the precise geographic location of each individual hotel or restaurant or covering the broader geographic area of a national or local hotel or restaurant association. iMap allows guests and hotel or restaurant staff to click anywhere in the world and receive current conditions and 5-day weather forecasts.
Members will also benefit from iMapTV (IPTV) weather services, which offer hotels their own unique ‘Private Weather Channel’ which may be accessed by guests on television sets in member hotel rooms and in common areas.
In addition, the agreement makes available to hotels and resorts the CLEARPOINT Marine Weather service. Hotels and resorts located in coastal regions will be able to access specialized marine weather services such as wind speed, wave height, fronts, sea temperature, hurricane and typhoon tracking, and global lightning strikes.
‘Access to reliable global and local weather data is a universally important aspect of the hotel or restaurant customer’s experience; and we are pleased to be partnering with WDT to provide high quality weather reports and forecasts to our entire membership’, said Dr. Ghassan AIDI.
‘As a global weather company, WDT is delighted to have been chosen by IH&RA to supply its worldwide membership with high fidelity local and international weather services’, said Jim Laramie, Executive Chairman of WDT.
‘Hotels, restaurants and associations will benefit tremendously from accessing a full portfolio of dedicated weather services which are tailored and geo-referenced according to the precise location of each hotel or restaurant, anywhere in the world’, said Mr. Laramie.
iMap(R) Interactive Weather is an interactive Flash-based Internet weather map. Each iMap is embedded in a hotel or restaurant website centered on the geographic location of each hotel or restaurant within a chain.
iMapTV Private Weather Channel offers hotels the ability to broadcast local and global weather to TVs in all rooms and common areas in any hotel.
CLEARPOINT(R) Marine Weather Service offers vital information on all marine conditions, including wave height, wind speed, sea temperature, air temperature, ocean currents, fronts, global lightning strikes, marine bulletins, and much more…
About IH&RA
The International Hotel & Restaurant Association (IH&RA) is the only global business organization representing the hospitality worldwide. Its members are the national hotel and restaurant associations throughout the world, and international and national hotel and restaurant chains representing some 50 brands. Officially recognized by the United Nations, IH&RA monitors and lobbies all international agencies on behalf of this industry, estimated to include 300,000 hotels and 8 million restaurants, employing 60 million people and contributing with 950 billion USD annually to the global economy.
About WDT
Founded in 1999, Weather Decision Technologies, Inc. (WDT) has become a global leader in providing state-of-the-science weather detection, nowcasting, and forecasting systems and services to our partners and customers. WDT provides its numerical weather prediction capabilities and services for weather sensitive industries globally. WDT maintains operational and international offices in metropolitan Washington, DC; Norman, Oklahoma; Munich, Germany; and Tokyo, Japan.
For more information, please contact :
International Hotel & Restaurant Association
Thalis Papadopoulos
Phone +41 22 734 80 41
E-mail info@ih-ra.com
website www.ih-ra.com