Alien Explainers

1 hour ago

Simone Puorto Has Been Abducted, and Only Hospitality Can Bring Him Home

Podcast episode featuring Alan Young of Infor and David Poprawka exploring the philosophy of hospitality, from host-guest power dynamics to whether an automated hotel can still be called hospitality.

Alan Young, David Poprawka, and Simone Puorto in conversation with The Delegation of Nebula Five

A delegation of curious aliens has arrived on Earth with an ambitious goal: launching the galaxy’s first interstellar hotel brand. There is one problem. They have no idea how human hospitality works, starting with hospitality itself and ending with the baffling language of hospitality technology: MCP, RAG, GEO, agentic AI, attribute-based selling, and the rest of the buzzwords everyone nods along to without quite explaining.

To solve that problem, they abducted Simone Puorto. His release depends on one condition: he must teach them everything there is to know about the industry. Since no one can explain it all alone, each episode Simone calls on the people who actually build and run this business to explain a single concept, in language that an alien, or anyone encountering it for the first time, could follow. There is one rule: if the aliens do not understand it, the explanation is not good enough, and Simone stays where he is.

The result is a conversation built for hoteliers, revenue managers, marketers, and operations teams who are tired of hearing the latest buzzword without ever getting a straight answer on what it actually means.

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Alien Explainers is hosted by Simone Puorto, a techno-philosopher and consultant with over 25 years of international experience, and the author of five best-selling books exploring the intersection of technology and the travel industry. He is Head of Emerging Trends & Strategic Innovation at Hospitality Net, and serves as a board advisor to more than a dozen global tech companies.

Simone is also the founder of several innovation-driven ventures at the intersection of hospitality and technology, and organized Polybius, the world's first hospitality event held entirely in the metaverse. He lectures on MBA programs at institutions including EHL Hospitality Business School, Les Roches, Glion, and ESSEC, and has written several hundred published articles on hospitality technology across the trade press.

That combination, translating complex technology for an academic audience and a professional one alike, is exactly what he brings to Alien Explainers: the instinct to ask the question everyone in the room is quietly wondering, and the patience to keep asking it until the answer actually makes sense.