At this year’s general meeting of the OTDS Association on July 2, one of the tasks was to fill the position of Michael Fischerkeller (vtours), which had so tragically become vacant. Michael Aubermann (a-five) as one of two candidates received a clear majority of votes and thus completes the Board.
As co-founder and COO of a-five business solutions GmbH, Michael Aubermann built up in-depth OTDS expertise at an early stage. His company offers software solutions – including several for OTDS users – for the travel industry. For many companies starting their involvement in the OTDS world Aubermann also serves as a consultant and in addition contributed his expertise to the association’s Technical Committee for several years.
“I would like to represent the perspective on OTDS of small and medium-sized companies from Germany and abroad on the Board,” says Aubermann, describing his motivation for his successful candidacy. With immediate effect, he will be joining the Board team led by Chairman Ömer Karaca (Schmetterling), further consisting of Michael Becher (Bewotec), Lothar Schmitz (Amadeus Leisure IT), Thorsten Hendrick (Schauinsland-reisen), Deniz Ugur (Bentour) and Haiko Gerdes (TraSo).
At the members’ meeting, Ömer Karaca expressed his confidence that, following the accession of a-five, eMind and freshcells, further members will join OTDS e.V. in the second half of 2024: “We are seeing a continuous, high level of interest in the data standard and the association – both from the Germany region and internationally.” Due to the insolvencies of Attika Reisen and in particular of FTI, the association has lost two important members and OTDS users from the very beginning in the current financial year.