Travel firms have been urged to prioritise “pace over perfection” and told to “get on with” efforts to improve the industry’s record on sustainability.
Speaking at last week’s Travel Weekly Sustainability Summit immediately after returning from the Cop29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, easyJet holidays chief operating officer Matt Callaghan insisted “the era of accountability is here”.
Callaghan stressed the importance of industry collaboration to drive progress but said: “It’s got to be pace over perfection because the clock is ticking.”
“If I heard climate emergency once, I heard it 200 times in the last 24 hours [at Cop29] and it was talked about so often for a reason,” he added.
“We could sit here for years trying to come up with the perfect solution for dealing with food waste or water management or whatever it is, or we could say ‘what is one possible solution that might work?’ and trial that in one location and get on with it.”
There was fierce criticism from developing countries most at risk from the climate crisis when Cop29 broke up with pledges of financial assistance from wealthier governments far short of what they sought.
But Callaghan insisted there were reasons to be positive about the summit, which included the first travel and tourism-focused programme in the event’s history.
He also said it was “refreshing” that discussions about decarbonisation had focused on collaboration and had avoided a “constant bashing” of the aviation and cruise sectors.
“[Cop29] didn’t just highlight what’s at stake, it also underscored the immense possibilities and opportunities we’ve got,” he added.
“Now the responsibility is ours to start taking those and moving forward. We can no longer just have good intentions, good ambitions, good strategies or a nice set of pillars.”
Callaghan’s views echoed those of Tui Group head of sustainability Ian Corbett, who hailed incremental progress in a range of operational areas and stressed the need for action over words in the recent sustainability-themed edition of Travel Weekly.