"Conversations with Alumni" - Jules Sieburgh ‘72, MBA ‘74
Joy Xu, a junior at the Hotel School, had the opportunity to interview Jules Sieburgh ‘72, a pioneer in the hospitality technology industry (previously CTO of Host Marriott Corporation and President of Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals)
“I was lucky enough to be in technology for the hospitality industry when technology was really developing. So, I was really automating hotels from the very beginning.”
Jules Sieburgh ‘72 grew a fascination with data and technology in college through a Hotel School computer programming course, way before data and AI became popular (and what it is like today). From this love of technology, he went on to pioneer much of what the hospitality technology landscape looks like today, continuously pushing the envelope in terms of technology integration into hospitality data. Sieburgh boasts more than three decades of experience and accomplishments within the hospitality industry. Most notably, Sieburgh previously served as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Host Marriott Corporation.
Shortly after he graduated from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration in 1972, Sieburgh started off his hospitality technology career through Sonesta Hotels and Resorts, where he worked for 13 years (1978-1991), ending as VP of Information Technology. “In those years, I was implementing technology that was brand new and converting manual systems into spreadsheets and PCs,” Sieburgh said. “One time, I even smuggled a PC in my suitcase to our property in Bermuda just to implement on the computer system there.”
After Sonesta, Sieburgh went to work as Vice President of Hotel Systems at InterContinental Hotels, where he was responsible for hotel systems across the world. From there, he went on to be Director of Industry Relations at priceline.com before landing his notable role as CTO for Host Marriott. As CTO, Sieburgh was accountable for evaluating hotel technology requests ranging from $15M to $20M annually[1]. Most recently, he has served as Senior Vice President for Kerzner International Bahamas, managing their entire technology team of around 80 people.
Sieburgh has had many ups and downs throughout his career of implementing groundbreaking hotel technology, but his most memorable experience was at Priceline.com during the “dot com bubble” in the late 1990s[2]. “It was a very crazy time in the dot com world. We worked basically 24/7, US technology stock was rapidly rising, and it was a very unique and crazy environment. Everything worked at high speed, and it was very, very exciting,” Sieburgh stated.
Sieburgh admits to having countless amazing stories from his career, including a scary extortion incident from his time at the Bahamas. “December 1st of the year I started working at Atlantis in the Bahamas, I got an extortion email from a hacker threatening to sell the private information of the entire casino database, including famous people like Charles Barkley and Michael Jordon,” Sieburgh said. “During that time, I was sleeping less than four hours a night, and we had to bring in forensic and technology experts to work through the night to catch the hackers making the threats.”
Throughout Sieburgh’s extensive and exciting career, a common thread for him was the power of networking and of the Hotelie community. “When I was in grad school, Jay Walker who was the founder of Priceline.com came to my fraternity. So I ended up at Priceline just through connections mainly,” Sieburgh stated. “A big part of it is through Cornell networks; at Host Marriott, I would run into people like Kevin Jacobs (‘94, CFO of Hilton), who I now know very well.”
An organization that has been near and dear to Sieburgh’s heart in terms of networking and beyond is Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP). “HFTP is an association which focuses on technology and finance, but the organization is incredible as far as networking goes,” Sieburgh said. Sieburgh acted as President of the association for multiple years, where he ran the national HITEC conference: the world’s largest, longest-running hospitality technology event. Sieburgh recommends anyone interested in hospitality technology to get involved in HFTP.
As a lasting piece of advice for current Cornell students, Sieburgh encourages getting plugged into community and thinking outside the box when it comes to technology. Sieburgh was always asking people: How can we use consumer data more? “The hospitality industry is still quite a bit behind on how we do things, and it is for your generation to figure out how to integrate data and AI,” he concluded.