The scale of the challenge facing the sector can seem overwhelming. Ian Taylor reports on Abta’s recent Delivering Sustainable Travel conference
Many travel businesses only recently woke up to the urgency of acting on emissions reduction and other aspects of sustainability and “it’s easy to feel overwhelmed”, Abta’s recent Delivering Sustainable Tourism Conference heard.
Mireia Delgado, business director at consultancy Preverisk, told the conference: “It’s only two or three years ago that businesses really started to worry about this.” Now, she said: “Everyone needs to understand what sustainability is.”
Abta director of industry relations Susan Deer said: “It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by climate change, and we’re constantly told as an industry we’re not doing enough.”
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But she warned: “There is a fine line between giving people enough information to take action and giving them so much information they are overwhelmed, and it leads to inaction.”
Deer argued that “positivity” in face of the challenges “should not be misinterpreted as misunderstanding the seriousness of the situation”.
Kasia Morgan, group head of sustainability at Travelopia, said: “It can be so daunting when you look at all the touch points this industry has. We have to recognise we can’t do it all at once.”
She urged companies to undertake ‘materiality assessments’ of their “biggest impacts” and said: “We set up a suppliers’ council of 10 representatives that was vital in launching supplier engagement.”
Delgado agreed: “We need to focus on what we can do first and influence suppliers. Assess your supply chains and start to prioritise. Sustainability needs to become a part of governance. It does not start and finish. It’s like having new glasses – you have to look at everything differently.”
Abta head of sustainability Carol Rose told the conference: “We don’t really understand our supply chain [and] scope three [indirect] emissions tend to be a mystery in our industry. I was in fashion and we had to map our supply chains and where the biggest impacts are.”
She argued: “We need to rethink product development and the whole [travel] eco-system.”
World Travel & Tourism Council president and chief executive Julia Simpson insisted: “A lot of our members are really gripping this, not just doing it as a tick-box exercise.”
But Tom Armitt, global manager at community tourism organisation Planeterra, argued: “I see increased awareness in the mainstream tourism industry. [But] it’s hard to say whether we’re on track [as an industry]. There has to be a significant shift in perspective in the industry.”
Tui’s prime focus is on carbon
Industry leader Tui is making progress on multiple fronts as it seeks to make mainstream tourism more sustainable, but sustainable business manager Ian Corbett highlights the group’s “massive focus” on carbon.
He told the conference: “Our biggest single focus is carbon. We’ve set science-based targets (SBTis) across our cruise, airline and hotel businesses to reduce emissions. Our immediate focus is on 2030 targets [and] we’re committed to achieve these. We have a massive focus on carbon.”
The science-based targets initiative (SBTi) reviews and validates “clearly defined, science-based pathways” for cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by target dates, short and long term.
Tui’s 2030 SBTi emissions-reduction targets commit its airline to cutting CO2 per revenue passenger km (its carbon intensity) by 24% on 2019. Tui cruises reduce its absolute CO2 emissions by 27.5%, and the group’s hotels must cut emissions by 46.2%.
Corbett explained: “That is an absolute reduction in CO2 at the [more than 400] hotels we own directly or jointly.”
He said: “It’s not hard to calculate the targets. The hardest bit is modelling what it’s going to cost to hit the targets. The danger is you can spend so much time developing targets you don’t focus on the reductions. Targets are just a driver, though they’re important for a company like ours.”
Corbett added: “Hotels we don’t own but send guests to form part of our scope three [indirect] emissions [and] we need to bring those along with us.”
Tui deploys its own ‘Green and Fair’ logo to denote hotels certified as sustainable to Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) standards. Corbett said: “The problem is there are 30-plus sustainable certification bodies, so we ask customers to look for the Green and Fair label as a guide to a more sustainable choice. It’s for any hotel that has achieved GSTC-recognised certification. We’re trying to simplify how it’s signified.
“About 1,500 hotels we use globally have achieved GSTC-recognised certification.”
He noted: “We send more guests to hotels we contract with than we own or operate. A lot of hotels need help to know what do to. We want to share what we learn from the decarbonisation of our own hotels and encourage them to be part of this. We want everyone to decarbonise.”
Action to cut food waste
Leading operators, including Tui UK and easyJet Holidays, are working with hoteliers to reduce food waste.
Corbett explained: “There is a huge focus on food waste by hoteliers because of the cost. [But] everyone measures food waste in a slightly different way.
“We have a lot of buffets, so can we reduce waste while not preaching to or ‘punishing’ guests [by providing less food]?”
Matt Callaghan, easyJet Holidays customer and operations director, reported on a trial of technology aimed at slashing food waste at a Tenerife hotel, undertaken with food waste specialist Winnow.
Callaghan described the hotel partner as a “big all-inclusive” and said the trial led to a 72% reduction in waste in a year, saying the technology “shows the cost of food thrown away [and] what the kitchen orders that is wasted”.
He explained: “It had to be a high-volume hotel because we want to shift the dial. We also wanted to scale this quickly, so we wanted a hotel that is part of a small chain.”
Callaghan insisted: “This is not about reducing customer choice. It’s about implementing tools and solutions that help.” He added: “We want to share the learnings.”
‘Not having resource is a challenge’
Most travel companies lack the resources to establish full-time sustainability managers and teams, so the issues cannot be solely addressed by specialists if the sector is to make progress.
At Barrhead Travel Group, head of PR and communications Karen Musgrave has taken a lead on sustainability. She said: “We don’t have dedicated sustainability resource. That is probably not unusual, but everyone is concerned about it.
“We had a brain-storming session to work out what is in our control and what we could influence. First was our retail network. We made a list of what we could do first, so we feel we’re making progress. Some of it is as simple as [organising] a full plastic audit across our stores. We have a lot of engagement with staff.”
Barrhead is not a small company, of course. It has 85 retail outlets and an online agency and works with hundreds of suppliers.
Musgrave explained: “We have two aims – to look at our own operations and at how we work with suppliers on sustainability.”
She argued: “Not having resource is a challenge. [But] focus on what is in your control. If you’re in travel, it’s your business to be concerned about sustainability.
“The big thing is education. If you don’t understand the impacts of travel on a destination, you won’t have the motivation to do something about it.”
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