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Travel industry ‘needs to make faster progress on sustainability’

The travel industry needs to make faster progress on sustainability, with a drive for collaboration sometimes getting in the way of action.

That is according to easyJet holidays customer and operations director Matt Callaghan, who said: “There is an obligation on us to help shift consumers. If we want to have tourism for generations to come, we need to get on with educating customers.”

He argued: “The industry has been talking about this for so long but made so little progress.”

Callaghan questioned research suggesting consumers increasingly look for sustainable travel options, saying: “Any consumer research needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Seeing what customers buy is a much more reliable monitor.”

He added: “Coming up with a sustainability strategy is the easy bit. It’s how you deliver a strategy [that matters].”

Delivering on sustainability requires “education, collaboration and rapid implementation”, he said. However, Callaghan insisted: “Collaboration is an over-used word. You can spend hours and hours in workshops. The yearning for collaboration is leading to procrastination.”

As an example, he said: “We’ve not set out a strategy to end food waste in our hotels, but we recognise food waste is a problem in some hotels so we’ve cracked on with a pilot scheme and if it works, we’ll scale it.

“Spain is the number-one destination for our customers and if we want to make a difference we have to start where we send most customers. This is not about a quick win somewhere.”

The company has partnered with the GSTC to recognise eco-certified hotels.

Callaghan explained: “We know a lot of customers won’t take time to search these out. We don’t wave a stick at suppliers, but we’re assessing the impact [on bookings] of eco-certified hotels. The biggest carrot will be a commercial benefit.”

He noted easyJet holidays introduced its sustainability strategy last year after launching as a package tour operator in 2019 just before the pandemic.

Callaghan said: “This [last] summer, when we took 1.1 million customers on holiday, was the first we’ve operated properly.”

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