STARTUP STAGE: Trees4Travel offers a simple solution to address climate change

Trees4Travel

Trees4Travel wants to offer a simple, easy to use solution to alleviate climate change by getting travelers to invest the price of a coffee in planting trees.

The startup operates at every touchpoint in the journey from traditional agents and OTAs to airlines and ground transportation companies.

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

• We plant trees as the world travels (for the price of a coffee).
• Climate change is real – according to the UN, we have 10 years to fix this
• Traditional carbon offset programs are complex and difficult to understand and have poor uptake and no follow up.
• Travel is an expensive and emotional purchase and can achieve an enormous positive climate impact, by offering a simple, tangible, and understandable product at every touchpoint of a journey.
• Harmonizing travel with the environment, through the industry collaborating in educating, connecting, and engaging travelers to their trip CO2 & their trees carbon offsetting progress through ownership and real reporting is the best route forward.
• Reforestation is scientifically proven to be the most effective solution for climate change.
• Trees4Travel connects travel to nature and the opportunity for mindful travel to be a part of every touchpoint of every journey.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your start-up.

Our business operates at every touchpoint of a journey, covering traditional travel advisors to OTAs, airlines and airports, and ground transportation, including rail, car hire and car services. 

We also work in both B2B and B2C sectors, and in a variety of ways, from direct sales, to partners who gift trees, to revenue share agreements.

Our technology is flexible as trips can be entered manually through the traveler's dashboard, to CSV file uploads to API connectivity.

Our API can take tree ‘bookings’, calculate and feed back the CO2 emissions from a trip (and the number of trees that would be required to offset the CO2 within 5 to 10 years), to the partner website. 

We also offer a live data widget that shows how many trees have been planted by all partners together, and how much CO2 those trees will absorb over the next 5 to 10 years.

We use trip data to calculate the CO2 emitted from cars/bus/train/flights to accommodation, using GHG Protocol & IPCC DEFRA calculation methods, to give an accurate amount of CO2 emitted by a trip.

Trees are planted, CO2 calculated and monitored with monthly reporting to show CO2 absorption versus emissions, plus we’re able to supply such data through API or through bespoke monthly reporting.

Our tree plantations are all accredited by institutions such as Verra, Gold Standard and World Resources Institute.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

Strengths 

• Trees4Travel is a simple to understand, tangible, accountable and affordable way to offset CO2.
• Trees4Travel is the only solution that allows a user to track and follow their trees, matching the CO2 absorbed to the CO2 emitted by their travel, as their trees mature.
• Travel needs a green focus, and now.
• Our technology is ready right now & as travel returns, our partners will be able to immediately show their actions & support for a better, safer and more sustainable world.
• Having previously developed award-winning travel tech, we understand the complexities of the various travel businesses, but also recognize that this industry could also achieve an enormous positive climate impact.
• We are a small team, which is an advantage as we can act and develop quickly.

Weaknesses 

• We are a small team, in discussions with some of the biggest travel companies, we will need to grow our team quickly following launch. 
• To combat climate change, we need ‘all hands on deck’ in a coordinated, focused approach from the leading companies in travel – we need them to help us and to work together.
• Our product is very low margin and therefore requires high volume to make the project sustainable.
• Travel is expected to start its recovery in the next 12 to 24 months which is a long time from now, so keeping overheads very low is a must.

Opportunities 

• COVID stopped travel, yet when borders were reopened for a short period in spring/summer 2020, it was clear to see how travelers were eager to return as quickly as possible.
• COVID has made both the travel industry, corporates, and travelers more aware of the importance of the natural world & its power over us, and of sustainable travel. 
• 72% of travelers would opt for a more sustainable journey (survey by Booking.com).
• At this moment in time, scientists agree that forest restoration is overwhelmingly more powerful than all other climate change solutions.
• We aim to help travelers plant trees at every touch point of a journey, starting at the booking, to the taxi, train, car, airport, plane, accommodation - and back again.
• Our aim is to help all travelers cover their CO2 emissions within 5 to 10 years, after which they will continue to ‘own’ their trees, but future CO2 absorbed will be to offset historic CO2 for the remaining 140 years of their lives, making travel CO2 negative.
• ‘Business as usual’ is not an option for the travel industry, and that message seems to have been clearly received because of the COVID crisis – this is an opportunity to rethink travel development.

Threats 

• COVID will last longer than expected & the travel comeback will take longer than hoped.
• The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted climate change & devastated the travel economy, so many potential partners may no longer exist.
• The travel industry will take too long to adapt, change, to act.
• Other solutions/apps exist for carbon offsetting, such as carbon credits (but we feel these are often too complex, incorporating food, household utilities, daily activities and so forth).

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

Customer Perspective:

By making sustainable travel easily accessible & understandable through a simple tangible and affordable product.

Travelers can monitor their travel impact, by being connected to their trees and developing their own micro forests through purchasing trees directly, through our travel partners, or by being gifted trees through some partners.

Industry Perspective:

The travel industry now more than ever needs to take into consideration the sensitive links between travel and the environment. Trees4Travel is the conduit that links the natural world with the travel world.

Sharing the responsibility with each segment of the journey and sharing the results with the traveler makes it possible for everyone involved, including the passenger, to ‘do their bit’ when it comes to offsetting CO2.

Using a 3^rd party with a tangible product, to manage sustainability projects allows travel companies to focus on the recovery of their core business, and at the same time, build trust and loyalty from their customers.

Being a part of the journey, by being a Trees4Travel partner enables travel companies to be part of a club, where suppliers, distributors corporates and even the individual traveler, can help each other to help the planet.

Trees4Travel offers a simple, easily implementable sustainability strategy for an industry it understands & focuses on one powerful solution – reforestation – which will have the most efficient & positive climate change impact.

Trees4Travel offers travel companies a revenue share & can therefore help their business recovery.

So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

We aim to have a presence at every touch point of a journey.

Our partners, by collaborating together, will help to educate travelers along the way & will engage in planting trees if it is made easily available to them.

With the collective will of the travel industry, this should be easily attainable.

Trees should be offered for purchase or gifted for any trip from booking to all types of transport, airports, accommodations – online & offline – both in place of departure & destination & again on return.

The opportunity to sell and plant trees & to do good is phenomenal.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

We have reached out and connected with many major travel companies across the world who we’ve previously worked with, and we have received unanimous positive response to this project with partnership agreements either completed, or in the pipeline.

Thankfully, corporates are also acutely aware of the necessity to be more sustainable, and they are asking their TMCs to offer options for this.

Sustainable travel was already on some travel companies agenda pre-COVID, however during the COVID crisis we have only just begun to understand the sheer scale our actions or inactions can have on our world and that there is a clear link between us, the natural world and it’s power over us.

The devastation of the travel industry has highlighted the urgency, the need to find solutions now for a safer, healthier future world. Trees4Travel was created to help travel companies have an easy, understandable, impactful solution that could be implemented immediately.

The addressable market should be every traveler at every stage of their journey – it must be a collaborative effort and we must work with something where people can see the benefits their actions are bringing, at any time during or after a journey.

How and when will you make money?

We are a profit for good business, aiming for B Corporation status, a company that balances  business and purpose. The moment a booking for a trip is made by any partner, Trees4 Travel will make money.

We’re not a charity because we have years, not decades, to reverse global warming. This means we need to reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible, in other words, we need to scale fast. It's important to remember, it’s not just a simple act of planting 1 sapling, there's a whole chain of people, organizations, money & hard work that transforms that one click 'Plant A Tree' into an amazing tree on our planet that could live for 150 years and absorbs roughly 3 tons of CO2 in its lifetime.

Our distribution of funds works like this: 67% tree planting & distribution, 18% development & income, 15% overheads. 

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

The founders are a husband and wife team – serial entrepreneurs who have worked together for the past 25 years creating award winning companies in various industries.

Most recent industry awards include:

SABRE Travel Network -Travel Technology Exchange - Dallas 2015 - Winner of Best Online Travel App.

ASTA American Society of Travel Agents - Entrepreneur of the Year - San Diego 2017 – 1 of 3 Finalists & winner of the people’s vote.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

We thought it would be difficult to get travel companies to realize the urgency to address climate change, however the reality has been that they are extremely happy to discuss this with us and work towards a solution with us, however they are under extreme stress to restructure their businesses to survive the pandemic and are therefore resource short in implementation.

Secondly, we have self-funded the project, however we have also sought some investment to help us carry through COVID – being in travel has not been seen as an attractive investment for a non-trading start-up at this time, even though there are signed contracts and that we all know that travel must and will return.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact - so why are you going to be one of lucky ones?

We have started many businesses - for us, start-up life is ‘business as usual’! 

We feel that we’ve gained so much knowledge and experience through the years, and the fact that we will work through existing companies with existing customers, that their connections will help the project achieve its goals.

Furthermore, there couldn’t be a better time for this - the product is right and we’re focused on one powerful and influential industry.

A year from now, what state do you think your start-up will be in?

We will have hopefully already planted many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of trees for the travel industry.

We hope that Trees4Travel will be a brand that will be the travel industry’s preferred sustainability solution – a brand that can be shared between travel and associations and that the industry can be proud of supporting and building together.

What is your end-game? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)

As previously mentioned, we are serial entrepreneurs, and the usual route would be to float or sell the company, however this project is very different.

We will most likely stay private and perhaps create a foundation or trust to protect the work we all do together, and the trees we all plant – this attitude is perhaps also holding back investors from getting involved as we do not offer them any clear exit strategy – perhaps it will end up being owned by the industry?