OpenTravel Alliance Appoints Jeff ErnstFriedman as Executive Director

SAN FRANCISCO, March 25, 2020 (Newswire.com) - ​The OpenTravel Alliance, the not-for-profit responsible for developing and maintaining interoperability for disparate systems in all travel industry verticals, has appointed Jeff ErnstFriedman as the new OpenTravel Executive Director. ErnstFriedman will be responsible for initiating alliances for wider adoption of OpenTravel standards, managing new initiatives to address upcoming travel challenges, and spearheading growth efforts, including expanding membership and coordinating messaging development.

Prior to OpenTravel, ErnstFriedman was a Program Manager at the Linux Foundation for more than half a dozen projects, including the OpenAPI Initiative, OpenHPC, Civil Infrastructure Platform, Tizen, and Code Aurora. He ran business governance, marketing, and technical steering committee meetings charged with membership growth, retention and project evangelism. Previously, he worked with the Cloud Foundry Foundation, Cisco Security, Verisign and Dimension Data, providing strategic communications.

“Jeff possesses the experience that the board was seeking,” said Susanne Auinger, OpenTravel Board Chair. “His history of managing open-source projects has given him insight into the benefits of standards development. As the travel industry is facing the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be even more of a need for collaboration as we work to develop innovative solutions that will nurture the travel industry ecosystem. We’re excited to see how OpenTravel can further meet the needs of the travel industry with Jeff’s direction.”

OpenTravel recently announced a partnership with the International Inbound Travel Association (IITA) that provides education and business growth opportunities between the organizations. Additional partnerships will soon be announced, as well as the launch of work groups to address new travel trends.

Greg Land, OpenTravel Board Member and IBM Global Segment Leader for Travel, said, “Interoperability across travel providers is going to be imperative in order to navigate this current crisis. Jeff brings technical knowledge, project management experience, and strong leadership skills that are needed to take us into the future. OpenTravel, with Jeff’s leadership, will play a key role in setting standards to drive innovation.”

“It’s an interesting time to take on a role in an organization so uniquely positioned as OpenTravel,” noted ErnstFriedman, OpenTravel Executive Director. “The travel industry is facing the most significant threat it has ever seen. However, OpenTravel was founded to solve specific business challenges. My goal is to take the history of collaboration and bring it to the next level so that our membership and partners can creatively solve our current challenges while we meet the ever-changing needs of travelers as the recovery begins.”

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About OpenTravel Alliance

Founded in 1999, OpenTravel is a not-for-profit trade association focused on the creation of electronic message structures to facilitate communication between disparate systems in the global travel industry. Comprised of all industry segments including air, hotel, car, rail, cruise, etc., OpenTravel is the only standards body for global, open, independent and mission-critical interoperability of travel e-commerce standards which allows for multi-language platforms to co-exist.

Source: OpenTravel Alliance