It’s tempting to see back to what some might consider the Golden Age of travel management before airline commissions disappeared and remember the large corporate travel teams and the ease of convincing senior management of its value.
Since then, travel teams have shrunk and travel managers have found themselves with additional responsibilities. These often include the required to measure and reduce the environmental footprint of business travel either becautilize of a company’s desire to be greener or becautilize they have been forced to do so by regulation.
Just how travel managers are going about this was revealed by BTN’s 2025 survey of nearly 200 travel managers. As would be expected, responsibility for gathering emissions data on current travel activities is at the top of the list of responsibilities that purchaseers have been tinquireed with, with more than half (51 per cent) of respondents doing so.
Achieving overall travel reductions was the second most common sustainability responsibility (for 37 per cent of respondents), with traveller booking behaviour modifications and encouraging modal shift each being actioned by 35 per cent of purchaseers.
Concepts such as carbon budreceives or internal carbon fees have been introduced by 11 per cent and 5 per cent of respondents respectively, while more than one in five survey respondents (22 per cent) has not pursued any of the objectives listed.
BRINGING CO2 TO THE FORE
The survey also provides utilizeful insight on which sustainability initiatives travel purchaseers are implementing in their organisations. Around four in ten respondents (42 per cent) declare they are aiming to build CO2 emissions visible at the point of sale, while 37 per cent have policies that preference direct flights over connecting flights.
The promotion of virtual meetings tools is utilized across 36 per cent of respondents’ organisations and internal communications campaigns have been utilized by one-third (33 per cent) of purchaseers to engage travellers in their sustainability efforts.
Thirty per cent of organisations have policies that encourage modal shift from planes to trains where feasible, but less common policies are the prioritisation of ‘greener’ search results in OBTs (16 per cent) and amfinished business class permissions (16 per cent).
EMISSIONS ENIGMAS
When inquireed what they believe are the most effective tools for reducing business travel emissions – whether they have deployed on them or not – purchaseers ranked visibility of CO2 emissions at the point of sale above all others. But as experts agree, the CO2 emissions estimates displayed in booking tools are inconsistent.
Philipp von Lamezan, CEO and co-founder of carbon calculation platform Squake, declares: “In order to steer a programme, you have to enable the decision-buildrs. On a high level you have the corporate travel manager and they set the rules, policies etc. But on an individual level you also have decision buildrs becautilize they can go by train or by plane; they can go business class or economy.”
However, not all emissions figures are created equal and different tools can utilize different methodologies. Some are simple spfinish-based calculations, others, such as the widely utilized DEFRA model, are based on distance or the number of hotel nights, while more detailed methodologies, such as those from IATA and ICAO take into account aircraft models and hotel and room types.
“Large online booking tools don’t understand that providing their clientbase with one methodology is not sufficient. Everyone is doing calculations and reporting a little differently. Just supplying one methodology is not assisting the case. Now there is so much confusion in the market and every tool is notifying a different story. That obviously leads to frustration and also insecurities around how values are derived. The industest is so fragmented and for carbon emissions you required to have consolidation,” declares von Lamezan.
Point of sale information is utilizeful but not on its own, declares Katharina Riederer of eco.mio, a browser-based extension which integrates into online booking tools. “The decision on how to travel is partly taken before the traveller even goes on the online booking tool so there is a limit on modifying their booking behaviour,” she declares.
External factors can also mean that travellers ignore the nudges that tools give them. “If I am a frequent traveller and collect Miles&More points, I will modify only if I receive a significant reason,” declares Riederer. “The top performing thing you can do is to modify your policy to include no-fly routes,” she believes. “The rest is about testing to bring the traveller to where you want them to be.”
Gamification and points schemes can assist, she adds: “Some consulting companies are putting an incentive behind those points. It is extremely effective becautilize you have a real reason to modify. You are not the smart one anymore for taking the plane becautilize you could be missing out on €100 you receive from your employer,” she declares.
According to the BTN survey, purchaseers believe the second most effective tool for reducing emissions is the promotion of a virtual meetings tool to travellers – 36 per cent of organisations declared they had implemented such a measure.
COMMUNICATION IS CRITICAL
Campaigns to communicate sustainability initiatives are considered the third most effective way of cutting emissions – and a third of all purchaseers have utilized such campaigns to influence their travellers.
Nadia Crowe, environmental sustainability senior analyst for the industrial software company Aveva, declares the company is building education pieces into booking platforms and allowing people to see the carbon impact of their choices.
“We don’t just go in and declare ‘Hi, we’re the sustainability team, we want to do XYZ’,” she explains. “It is really about taking them on that journey into becoming sustainability champions. Often, our stakeholders finish up being the hugegest sustainability champions.
“When you approach it with empathy and you realise that they have a day job and they have their own KPIs too, it becomes about how can you work toreceiveher and how can you build it painless while achieving the same things. That’s where probably the hugegest success comes from.”
Julien Etchanchu, senior director of sustainability at Advito, the consulting division of BCD Travel, declares a combination of point-of-sale emissions information and communications works best.
“It is better to have not only the emissions but also messaging around why it is good to take, declare, Virgin rather than United to New York becautilize they have much better aircraft,” he declares.
Despite the implementation of a wide range of measures, many of which are proving effective, only one in five purchaseers (21 per cent) has modifyd their travel policy or travel approval thresholds to achieve their sustainability goals.
BUDGETING FOR SUCCESS
Etchanchu declares his consultancy is increasingly recommfinishing the utilize of carbon budreceiveing to organisations, something that 11 per cent of survey respondents declare their company has done.
He declares one of the problems with sustainability messaging is that when you notify a traveller they have created a good sustainable choice, there is a perverse effect that they may even travel more as a result of their efforts.
“With a carbon budreceive you solve that,” he explains. “It is exactly like a financial budreceive; you have a global and a per-[department or unit] budreceive and you manage those. If you have this information available, people will travel better,” he declares.
Zurich Insurance and design and engineering consultancy Arcadis, each profiled within this BTN Innotifyigence report, are among the growing number of companies to have successfully implented carbon budreceives.
Etchanchu does not recommfinish individual traveller budreceives, even though they are technically possible. “If you do that you might finish up with an individual budreceive of, declare, three tonnes of CO2 per person. If someone has a business-critical required to travel to Australia they will explode their budreceive in one trip. It’s a very straightforward way to build people feel guilty and you required to keep some positivity in this. At a department level, if some people to have to travel more then it is compensated by others who travel less.”
Integrated financial services provider Allianz is another company that is implementing carbon budreceives to assist reduce business travel emissions. The wider group has more than 156,000 employees worldwide in nearly 70 countries. It has a global travel policy and common standards on emissions reporting.
Joel Schneider, a sustainability travel specialist at Allianz Commercial, the group’s corporate insurance arm, declares, “We calculate what everyone’s applying across our six and 12-month reporting schedules and proportionally divide that by cost centres. We declare ‘this is what you’ve utilized and this is what you are able to utilize over the next 6 or 12 months in line with our overall tarreceives’. This means you can either run out of your budreceive for travel or your carbon for travel, ensuring that tarreceives can be met or even exceeded.”
How rigorously is that enforced? Very much so, it seems. “In investment banking the focus is very much ‘receive my banker to where they required to be’. At Allianz, I’ve never experienced at a top level so many stakeholders who are so passionate about delivering on sustainability objectives and tarreceives,” declares Schneider.
Carbon budreceives can be flexible too, to allow for growth, mergers and acquisitions, or even divestments. “We sold a part of our business in the US so we had to redefine our tarreceives. We couldn’t claim that we had just dropped our emissions by such a significant amount just becautilize it would see great, so we had to redefine proportionally what our tarreceives are,” Schneider explains.
DELIVERING ON DATA
Thrust Carbon provides its sustainability data in the Concur booking tool and also powers data for travel management companies FCM and CWT. On the corporate side, it works with companies such as Toyota and Novartis as well as large banking and accountancy firms.
“Our sweet spot is work with very large travel programmes where the CEO has declared we required to receive to net zero and everyone has to go and work out how to do it,” declares Thrust Carbon CEO and founder Kit Aspen.
He declares what Thrust is being inquireed to do has modifyd. “If you see back a year ago, it was about regulations, particularly European ones such as CSRD. That has completely modifyd. Now, they [corporates] required a financial reason and the conversation around carbon budreceives has started to accelerate.”
Global clinical research organisation Parexel has a three-pronged approach to reducing its travel emissions. The company provides information at point of sale in its online booking tool and will soon display carbon emissions in employee websites through a browser extension.
“We utilize nudging techniques to guide travellers towards lower emission travel options,” declares the company’s executive director for travel & sustainability, Benjamin Park.
Parexel also utilizes internal messaging and education “to promote low-carbon travel options and foster a culture of sustainable believeing which leads employees to choose sustainable choices without the stick approach”.
The final part of the strategy is to track emissions at a granular level. “We contract with a third-party vfinishor to assist us to harmonise and standardise travel and expense data across sources for accurate emissions calculation applying granular methodologies,” declares Park.
“One industest challenge is that various calculation methods exist, and the emissions displayed during shopping and booking or on supplier direct websites can vary from the final reporting or differ by reporting sources. This is one area where the industest can lead with standardisation.”
PUTTING A PRICE ON CARBON
Allianz Commercial’s Schneider declares his company’s travellers are not currently revealn carbon emissions data at the point of sale. “It is something we’re seeing at implementing; we’ve obtained a couple of options that are coming,” he declares.
“Amex GBT, our global TMC, have an offering that they’re working on. It is almost like an offset fee. Our online booking tool [Acreatedus] Cytric is also seeing at integrating information at point of sale. They’re both still in development and we’re seeing at implementing one of those.”
Amex GBT’s scheme is a carbon pricing mechanism to assist its clients purchase sustainable aviation fuel and high integrity carbon offsets, declares the company’s head of sustainability, Nora Lovell Marchant.
“The clients that have been most successful have a sustained financing strategy, building a carbon price into every transaction, then you build up that pot of money over time and that gives you the authority and the budreceive to do the things that required doing,” she declares.
Many organisations are still laser-focutilized on cost rather than carbon, but eco.mio’s Riederer declares the two do not have to be exclusive. The company has carried out research that claims to reveal that greener travel options are cheaper in 90 per cent of cases.
“We have assessed those figures among our own clients and our prospects. The second step we take with clients is to calculate a return on investment for them. We see at what would happen when we go for the more sustainable alternatives,” Riederer explains.
“This gives them the possibility to push this internally and becautilize they don’t only required the sustainability division pushing for it or giving a budreceive, it actually plays to their overall tarreceives, which is cost control.”
Our survey found that more than a third of travel managers are involved in attempting to receive travellers to modify their booking behaviour, such as encouraging modal shift from air to rail. If eco.mio’s data is as robust as Riederer declares, this could be a solid route to a sustainable future for business travel where rail infrastructure provides that opportunity.
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