Jerne Reaches 11,000 Curators, Appoints Chief Technology Officer

 

10 February 2025 – Jerne (www.jerne.com), the leading platform connecting digital-focused travel curators with experience providers, has reached 11,000 registered curators (content creators, social media influencers, and travel advisor multi-hyphenates) alongside announcing the appointment of Jeremy Sikkema as the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), effective immediately.

 

“We’re incredibly proud to have reached the milestone of 11,000 registered curators in 114 countries,” said Tim Morgan, Chief Executive Officer, Jerne. “While an impressive number, our technology focus continues to hone in on helping our partners understand specifically which curators will truly move the needle for their business.”

 

To lead the company’s matchmaking efforts between its curators and experience provider partners, Jerne has appointed Jeremy Sikkema as Chief Technology Officer. Sikkema has over 20 years of experience developing technology platforms for the loss control, risk assessment, insurance, and wellness industries, including the last 4 years with Jerne.

 

“Ensuring Jerne’s platform amplifies the relationship of travel marketing and sales value is paramount to my team’s focus at Jerne,” said Jeremy Sikkema, Chief Technology Office, Jerne. “I look forward to continuing to develop industry-leading technology to ensure Jerne’s stakeholders are fully prepared to take advantage of the future of travel distribution.”

 

Sikkema most recently oversaw the development and launch of Jerne’s industry-first rating system across its network of 11,000 curators in 114 countries (62% USA, 12% UK, 6% Canada) with a cumulative reach of over 3 billion consumers. The rating system simplifies decision-making to one simple percentage based on each curator’s likelihood to be successful across a combination of three key functions:

 

– Inspiration: the likelihood of producing inspirational travel content,

– Awareness: the likelihood of building travel product awareness, and

– Influence: the likelihood of having a successful call-to-action for travel bookings.

 

In addition to an overall percentage, curator profiles are also given individual percentages in each key function, allowing experienced providers to adjust the profiles and communities they engage with as their sales and marketing needs ebb and flow.

 

Jerne’s simplified rating system analyzes 55 data points from the curator’s private Jerne and public social media profiles and displays the results alongside 18 data points from the experience provider’s brand profile. These 73 data points are weighted according to Jerne’s proprietary formula that is built on the culmination of 3 years of ongoing research across thousands of curators and hundreds of ocean and river cruise, hotel and resort, food and beverage, tour, short-term rental, spa and wellness, and insurance companies.

 

More information is available by e-mailing Jeff Sirota, Jerne’s Chief Commercial Officer, at jeff.sirota@jerne.com.

 

ABOUT JERNE

 

Jerne is the world’s leading platform connecting hundreds of experience providers (hotels, cruise lines, tour operators, restaurants, spas, and every experiential product in between) with thousands of influential travel curators (influencers, content creators, bloggers, travel advisors, and more) in over 100 countries, forming a new channel for travel marketing and sales.

 

For experience providers, Jerne’s end-to-end curator management platform simplifies travel curator sourcing, verification, agreement administration, content management, affiliate booking attribution, commission incentive reconciliation, earned media analytics, ROI reporting, and re-marketing via MyJerne – unlocking the full power of the travel curator distribution channel with Jerne’s proprietary inspiration engine. For travel curators, Jerne’s hundreds of experience provider partnerships open access to thousands of hosted experience opportunities with hotels, restaurants, spas, cruises, tours, and other travel and hospitality experiences that they can share with their community and earn incentives on attributable bookings.

 

Jerne was founded in 2021 by travel industry executives who have more than 40 years of combined travel and technology experience across the USA, Canada, and Europe. (www.jerne.com)