Sustainability
Protecting the Future
One of the biggest challenges facing the travel and tourism industry today is environmental sustainability. Issues range from greenhouse gases emitted by aircraft to the effect of tourism on sensitive environmental areas around the world. Corporate and leisure travellers have a growing interest in the carbon impact of the travel choices they make. As the scale of global travel has grown – to nearly 900 million international arrivals in 2007 – so have the concerns about the impact of travel on the environment.
Industry Leadership
Travelport occupies a unique position at the intersection of travel supply and demand, and we’re using that position to build partnerships that support sustainability, and to provide tools that enable our customers to make informed and environmentally responsible travel choices.
In 2007, for example, we sponsored a programme that offset the carbon emissions for the 600 attendees travelling to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. This year, Travelport partnered with the WTTC to sponsor the Tourism for Tomorrow Awards at the WTTC Summit in Dubai. The awards recognise organisations and companies that are leading the way in sustainable tourism. We also joined with the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) to launch the new ASTA Green Member Program, an innovative programme that will teach travel professionals about the importance of environmentally friendly travel.
Travelport's Carbon Tracker™
We also launched Carbon Tracker, an advanced emissions reporting tool developed to measure travel-related carbon emissions. It was developed with input from the Carbon Consultancy and other experts in the field of carbon management to ensure core data and calculation logic is robust, proven and reliable. We can now help our travel agency and travel management company customers respond to the need to measure, analyse and manage carbon emissions as part of sustainable travel programmes.
Local Commitments
Travelport has a responsibility to reduce our own impact on the environment – from reducing our energy consumption to increasing recycling and purchasing more green products. We are focused on the issues of RE-using, RE-ducing, RE-cylcing and RE-covering. In essence, we are RE-thinking all that we do on a day-to-day basis to transform Travelport into a more eco-friendly workplace.