Foundation & Governance
Activity Travel Protocol Foundation (in formation / 設立準備中)
The Activity Travel Protocol Foundation is being established as an independent standards body. No single commercial entity owns or controls the protocol.
Incorporation status: The Activity Travel Protocol Foundation is currently in the process of incorporation as a 一般社団法人 (general incorporated association) under Japanese law. The Foundation Charter is the operative governance document in the interim. All governance decisions made under the Charter remain valid upon incorporation.
The Foundation
The Activity Travel Protocol Foundation (in formation / 設立準備中) is being established as the independent standards body that will govern the Activity Travel Protocol. Upon incorporation, the Foundation will hold authority over the protocol specification (Layers 1–4), the SDK and conformance test suite, and the associated web properties and GitHub organisation.
Formal incorporation as a Japanese non-profit legal entity (一般社団法人アクティビティトラベルプロトコールファウンデーション) is in progress. The Foundation Charter is the operative governance document in the interim.
Founding story
The Activity Travel Protocol was created by Tom Sato, CEO of MyAuberge K.K., Chino, Nagano, Japan — a former Microsoft Windows and SDK engineer who recognised that the global travel industry was missing the protocol layer it needed for the age of agentic AI.
MyAuberge K.K. is the Founding Member of the Foundation and the primary contributor to Version 1.0. MyAuberge K.K. operates commercial services on top of the protocol. It does not own or control the protocol itself.
This is the Red Hat model applied to travel infrastructure: the protocol is free and Foundation-governed; commercial operators — including MyAuberge — compete on the quality of their implementations and managed services, not on control of the standard. The Foundation is being established precisely to make that separation structural and permanent.
Technical Steering Committee
The Technical Steering Committee (TSC) is responsible for protocol specification decisions — amendments, versioning, and the roadmap. The TSC Charter defines membership criteria, voting model, and the amendment process.
Current TSC composition: Tom Sato (Founding Maintainer). The structure is designed to accommodate additional members as the Foundation grows.
Founding Members
The Foundation welcomes Founding Members — organisations that commit to implementing the Activity Travel Protocol and participating in its development.
- MyAuberge K.K. Founding Member
- Further members Outreach in progress
Contributing
All proposed changes to the specification are submitted as GitHub pull requests with a written rationale. The TSC reviews and merges accepted changes.
By submitting a contribution, contributors agree to the Contributor Licence Agreement (CLA), which assigns copyright to the Foundation under Apache 2.0 and prevents any single party from relicensing the work.
To propose a change to the specification, or to enquire about Foundation membership, open an Issue on the protocol-spec repository.