{"id":45258,"date":"2025-08-17T18:54:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T01:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/?p=45258"},"modified":"2025-08-21T07:06:41","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T14:06:41","slug":"open-travel-end-the-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/open-travel-end-the-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for a change<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Time to end the chaos<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When last did you speak to a fellow traveler who was delighted about how their trip arrangements went? Why should we put up with this?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travel planning is time-consuming and irritating<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After 45 years working with travel reservation systems\u2014deeply involved in or familiar with most of the major solutions\u2014I can confidently say: knowing why<\/em> these systems behave the way they do doesn\u2019t make booking travel any less frustrating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the simplest trips are a headache. Booking air and hotel means juggling flight availability, cost, schedule, company policies, airport proximity, and ground transportation. Then there\u2019s hotel cost, location relative to meetings, and more company rules. Add car rentals, rail options (especially in Europe and Asia), and cruise departures from ports like Miami, Canaveral, or NYC\/NJ\u2014and the complexity multiplies.
Frustrations amongst the ultimate customer in our industry are at a boiling point and the time for change has never been more relevant than right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Industry Proposed Solutions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So what\u2019s the industry\u2019s answer? Push travelers to supplier websites and apps. Sure, they offer personalization\u2014but they don\u2019t solve the real pain points. I still have to manually navigate all the intersecting variables, or pay someone to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some channels and distributors are trying to help, but they fall short. What travelers need is simple: \u201cI want to attend a conference\u201d or \u201cI want to go to Disney World\u201d\u2014and the system should handle the rest. There\u2019s buzz around AI agents and LLMs as the magic fix. But even the smartest AI needs clean, actionable data and a deep understanding of travel\u2019s convoluted rules and workflows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real solution? Open source.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Other industries have figured this out. Auto manufacturers, for example, now collaborate on non-competitive features\u2014like how cars integrate with smart devices, maps, and even an auto grade Linux. They realized solving the same problems in silos is wasteful and expensive. Travel needs the same approach. An open source effort would reduce complexity, cost, and lower the barriers for publishing travel products\u2014big and small\u2014for AI agents to discover and act on. Imagine tours, restaurant reservations, and niche experiences being just as accessible as flights and hotels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making the Change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You can support the changes needed by supporting the creation of the Open Travel Foundation<\/a> as part of the Linux Foundation<\/a>.

The time is now as the travel retail market is ripe for disruption and under LF, there is the necessary foundational technology to make it happen. Efforts like Overture Maps<\/a>, OpenWallet<\/a>, OpenSearch<\/a>, DIF<\/a>, OSSF<\/a>, and more. . Opensource pulls together a community which act together to share costs and risk.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’d like to hear from you<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Curious to hear more? Visit our website <\/a>where we will be posting more detail when it becomes available. You may also request to meet and discuss how the foundation will benefit your business on that same page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s time we focus on the traveler experience in booking<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":45282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","wds_primary_category":19,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,19,22,20,18,17],"tags":[21,23,25,26,27,33,28,34,30,16,29],"class_list":["post-45258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-architectural-committee","category-collaboration","category-feedback","category-membernews","category-otm-dex","category-specification","tag-api","tag-api-chaos","tag-oai","tag-oas","tag-open-api-initiative","tag-open-offers","tag-open-travel-alliance","tag-open-travel-foundation","tag-openapi","tag-ota2-0","tag-sig-travel"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/travel-industry-577x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/travel-industry.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Stu Waldron","author_link":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/author\/stuwaldron\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentravel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}