HITEC TV: John Burns in conversation with Oracle's Alex Alt
The conversation opened with discussion of the challenges of leading an organization in which everyone is working remotely. For John, few of his clients are in an office, for Alex at Oracle Hospitality his staff are working from home, around the world. John adjusted to Zoom; Alex found that communication – daily with his direct reports, weekly with the global team – ensured coordination and a close sense of community and purpose. The quickened pace of technology development and implementation was the next topic, including discussion of the accelerated move by hotels to cloud-based systems and their embrace of contactless processes. Alex commented on the potential for new, customized system configurations as open APIs become common, then he and John talked about the challenge of boosting direct bookings, given the e-commerce expertise of the major OTAs. Potential disruptors of the hotel technology environment was the last topic explored before John posed a question to Alex that he said he had never before been asked.
