What Legacy Travel Companies Could Learn From Oracle Hospitality’s Weeklong Tech Push
Photo Credit: A view of a guest room at the Arlo NoMad in New York City. Arlo is uses Oracle's property management system with an integration by a tech vendor called Zaplox. Oracle Hospitality ran an innovation week in which it helped hoteliers and tech vendors integrate with its property management system. Arlo Hotels
Skift Take
A desperate urge to help get the travel sector back on its feet could give some companies a singular purpose, spurring innovation despite the pandemic's hit to revenues.
Until a recent turnaround, Oracle Hospitality was plagued by sluggish responsiveness to hotel and vendor requests for new services and smoother integrations. But the company has shown increasing responsiveness, as illustrated last week by its first so-called innovation week. What it did during that week may be worth emulating by other organizations in the travel sector.
Some backstory, first: When hoteliers want to add new technology to their operations, they often have to plug the services into their property management system, the core tech that stores data on guest and room inventory. Oracle's property management systems, such as Opera, are the world's most-used ones, running at about 40,000 properties. Yet Oracle Hospitality has long used legacy software code, processes, and commercial models. It set itself up for potshots from hotel and tech vendors.
To address this, Oracle Hospitality ran the innovation week. It made most of its staff available for five days around the clo
