Amadeus recently announced a partnership with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to provide the GDS’s customers information about their air travel carbon emissions.
Given the negative environmental impact of travel coupled with widespread online distribution of travel content (schedules, pricing, images, product details, etc.), I wondered how all the GDS’ were addressing the growing demand for more specific CO2 emissions data, specifically in air travel.
First, some terminology.
In travel, a journey’s carbon footprint is calculated by how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted during a given trip.
Aircraft emit lots of CO2 per passenger, followed by cruise ships, trains, cars and hotels.
Many organizations worldwide offer a way to purchase a corresponding amount of carbon offsets based on the CO2 emission of a given activity or trip.
In the GDS, I found no agent- or traveler-direct distribution of CO2 emissions information in the leisure and unmanaged corporate booking segments.
None.
Representatives from all three companies say the travel segment driving emissions-reporting is managed corporate travel, because the large corporations that have lots of business travelers generally have corporate social responsibility initiatives that require emissions reporting.
For those corporate customers, Travelport and Sabre offer emissions reporting post-trip, or for trips booked for the future.
Travelport’s product is Carbon Tracker and Sabre includes emissions information in its Traveler Security & Data Suite product.
However, Sabre is the only GDS that offers any kind of traveler-facing emissions information (for corporate travelers only) in the booking path via its GetThere Green product.
Surprisingly, Amadeus is the last GDS to the table; given Europe’s generally more stringent emissions regulations, I would have thought a European company would be in the forefront of C02-related initiatives.
According to Lucas Bobes from Amadeus’ Group Environmental Offices, Amadeus will use the ICAO carbon emission calculator to create an average emission of CO2 per city pair, and like Sabre and Travelport, the data will initially only be available as post-booking reports to corporate customers.
Ultimately, Amadeus want the data to be available in all selling platforms and possibly to their direct connect partners via their XML API, although they’ve set no date on any product delivery.
So why not offer travelers information about a trip’s given CO2 emissions in the booking path?
A Travelport representative points to the market and says: “We are currently reviewing the market needs for carbon related reporting across our point-of-sale applications and at this time, we are focused on post trip reporting.”
Sabre generally agrees. “Price and schedule are the primary drivers when passengers book flights,” says Leilani Latimer, director of Sustainability Initiatives at Sabre.
“We’ve seen no indicators that CO2 emission information would have any material impact on travel decision-making, and it’s hard to make a carbon tonne meaningful to a consumer.”
Common examples of making that carbon tonne meaningful include number of cars on the road or number of barrels of oil (although how many of you have ever seen a barrel of oil?).
A travel-specific example is emissions data for flights relative to one another.
That direct flight from Boston to Vienna might emit half the carbon tonnage as the connecting flight through Frankfurt, but it might cost 25 percent more.
Which would you book?
Given the almost total lack of traveler-facing emissions information, the GDS suppositions seem valid; if travelers really wanted it, we’d see it touted as a competitive advantage, like no-fee hotel bookings or double-mile programs.
One major airline that does put emissions information in the booking path for all customers is British Airways.
Using a calculation approved by the UK government’s Carbon Offsetting Quality Assurance Scheme, users to BA.com can select a flight and see the carbon emissions generated by the flight (in carbon tonnes) and also purchase an offset, adding the cost of the offset to the total flight cost.
“We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously,” says Cathy West of British Airways.
“So we have made it easy for our customers to offset the impact of their journey. Forcing them outside the booking path means adding another process,” decreasing the chance the customer will actually see the emissions and offset information and be able to act on it.
BA says it has received positive customer feedback and believes the program serves a market need.
Pete Davies, president of TerraPass Retail, agrees.
“At the margin, customers are quite interested in their CO2 footprint, and they pay attention to companies that take leadership positions in this area.”
What’s meaningful, he says, is the impact a carbon offset can have, not the carbon tonnage of a six-hour flight in a 787.
“People know traveling is bad for the environment, but understanding the CO2 impact in relative terms rather than absolute will drive demand for this information,” like the impact of carbon offset funds directed toward a wind farm or cleaner dairy operations.
A final consideration in this discussion is the method of emissions calculation.
All three GDSs use different calculation models for their CO2 emissions.
Sabre in particular seems to have put a great deal of effort into building a complex model based on aircraft type at time of booking (for fuel burn and seating configuration), distance flown between points, and various internationally accepted protocols.
The calculation seems of limited value, given that it is currently only being applied to one customer segment – managed corporate travel.
Adding emissions data to GDS booking platforms, while not difficult, obviously won’t generate much revenue in the short term, and given the current economic climate, any feature that doesn’t generate an immediate ROI will get bumped down the list.
Amadeus recently announced a partnership with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to provide the GDS’s customers information about their air travel carbon emissions.
Given the negative environmental impact of travel coupled with widespread online distribution of travel content (schedules, pricing, images, product details, etc.), I wondered how all the GDS’ were addressing the growing demand for more specific CO2 emissions data, specifically in air travel.
First, some terminology.
In travel, a journey’s carbon footprint is calculated by how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted during a given trip.
Aircraft emit lots of CO2 per passenger, followed by cruise ships, trains, cars and hotels.
Many organizations worldwide offer a way to purchase a corresponding amount of carbon offsets based on the CO2 emission of a given activity or trip.
In the GDS, I found no agent- or traveler-direct distribution of CO2 emissions information in the leisure and unmanaged corporate booking segments.
None.
Representatives from all three major GDSs say the travel segment driving emissions-reporting is managed corporate travel, because the large corporations that have lots of business travelers generally have corporate social responsibility initiatives that require emissions reporting.
For those corporate customers, Travelport and Sabre offer emissions reporting post-trip, or for trips booked for the future.
Travelport’s product is Carbon Tracker and Sabre includes emissions information in its Traveler Security & Data Suite product.
However, Sabre is the only GDS that offers any kind of traveler-facing emissions information (for corporate travelers only) in the booking path via its GetThere Green product.
Surprisingly, Amadeus is the last GDS to the table; given Europe’s generally more stringent emissions regulations, I would have thought a European company would be in the forefront of C02-related initiatives.
According to Lucas Bobes from Amadeus’ Group Environmental Offices, Amadeus will use the ICAO carbon emission calculator to create an average emission of CO2 per city pair, and like Sabre and Travelport, the data will initially only be available as post-booking reports to corporate customers.
Ultimately, Amadeus want the data to be available in all selling platforms and possibly to their direct connect partners via their XML API, although they’ve set no date on any product delivery.
So why not offer travelers information about a trip’s given CO2 emissions in the booking path?
A Travelport representative points to the market and says: “We are currently reviewing the market needs for carbon related reporting across our point-of-sale applications and at this time, we are focused on post trip reporting.”
Sabre generally agrees. “Price and schedule are the primary drivers when passengers book flights,” says Leilani Latimer, director of Sustainability Initiatives at Sabre.
“We’ve seen no indicators that CO2 emission information would have any material impact on travel decision-making, and it’s hard to make a carbon tonne meaningful to a consumer.”
Common examples of making that carbon tonne meaningful include number of cars on the road or number of barrels of oil (although how many of you have ever seen a barrel of oil?).
A travel-specific example is emissions data for flights relative to one another.
That direct flight from Boston to Vienna might emit half the carbon tonnage as the connecting flight through Frankfurt, but it might cost 25 percent more.
Which would you book?
Given the almost total lack of traveler-facing emissions information, the GDS suppositions seem valid; if travelers really wanted it, we’d see it touted as a competitive advantage, like no-fee hotel bookings or double-mile programs.
One major airline that does put emissions information in the booking path for all customers is British Airways.
Using a calculation approved by the UK government’s Carbon Offsetting Quality Assurance Scheme, users to BA.com can select a flight and see the carbon emissions generated by the flight (in carbon tonnes) and also purchase an offset, adding the cost of the offset to the total flight cost.
“We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously,” says Cathy West of British Airways.
“So we have made it easy for our customers to offset the impact of their journey. Forcing them outside the booking path means adding another process,” decreasing the chance the customer will actually see the emissions and offset information and be able to act on it.
BA says it has received positive customer feedback and believes the program serves a market need.
Pete Davies, president of TerraPass Retail, agrees.
“At the margin, customers are quite interested in their CO2 footprint, and they pay attention to companies that take leadership positions in this area.”
What’s meaningful, he says, is the impact a carbon offset can have, not the carbon tonnage of a six-hour flight in a 787.
“People know traveling is bad for the environment, but understanding the CO2 impact in relative terms rather than absolute will drive demand for this information,” like the impact of carbon offset funds directed toward a wind farm or cleaner dairy operations.
A final consideration in this discussion is the method of emissions calculation.
All three GDSs use different calculation models for their CO2 emissions.
Sabre in particular seems to have put a great deal of effort into building a complex model based on aircraft type at time of booking (for fuel burn and seating configuration), distance flown between points, and various internationally accepted protocols.
The calculation seems of limited value, given that it is currently only being applied to one customer segment – managed corporate travel.
Adding emissions data to GDS booking platforms, while not difficult, obviously won’t generate much revenue in the short term, and given the current economic climate, any feature that doesn’t generate an immediate ROI will get bumped down the list.