Toronto, Ont. Canada — Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®) announced today that it is organizing a Blockchain Technology Task Force to prepare for the technology's future impact on hospitality. The task force will be chaired by Lyle Worthington, CHTP, CIO of The Student Hotel and the 2017 HFTP Global President.

"Blockchain technology has been predicted to have the greatest impact on the future of the world economy," said Frank Wolfe, CEO of HFTP. "As the industry's nonprofit brain trust on finance and technology, it is incumbent on us to address the issue before blockchain reaches maturity and assembling a task force is the first step."

This week HFTP is hosting the 45th HITEC® (Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference – #HITECTor) at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Ontario Canada, where the topic will be extensively covered in the education program. First an introduction to the technology will be given in the Tuesday, June 26 keynote: The Blockchain Revolution presented by Alex Tapscott. Tapscott is a founding member at IMF's High Level Advisory Group on Fintech, as well as the co-author of the critically acclaimed best-seller "Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money Business and the World."

Following up this session on Wednesday, June 28 from 2:30-3:30 p.m. is the concurrent session Demystifying Blockchain Technology, where speaker Andrew Sanders will specifically address how blockchain technology positively addresses pain points that impact hotel companies and travelers. Sanders held executive and sales leadership positions at global companies specializing in enterprise hospitality technology solutions for over 20 years.

Members of the industry who would like to be considered for the task force should send an e-mail to Blockchain@hftp.org.