An association of hotel and tech companies, HTNG said members "representing the world's major hotel groups" collaborated on the initiative to "greatly reduce the cost and complexity for hotels of all sizes of satisfying Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards." HTNG said the framework defines "a viable, cost-effective approach to credit card security by ensuring that no hotel system would ever need to process, store or transmit payment card data." According to HTNG CEO Douglas Rice, "The objective is to let hotels focus on hospitality and let the payment services industry deal with payment card security. But it will only be fully effective in protecting hotel customers if every hotel company, every independent hotel, every application vendor, every distributor and every payment service provider uses it." To that end, the association is making the framework available to "all" interested parties, not just members. HTNG
began work on the project in 2011.