Travel managers in Italy are looking to drive change towards more sustainable business travel and were recently called to action at the sixth annual convention of the Italian Association of Travel and Mobility Managers (AITMM) held in Bologna in June.
With business travel volumes in Italy dominated by domestic transfers – largely on the road – discussion focused on encouraging corporates to move away from the company fleet.
“We must propose valid, attractive alternatives and experiment with the sharing economy,” insisted AITMM vice president Ivano Gallino.
“Travel managers must be the drivers of this change because we are responsible for the movement of people… and based on our analysis there is a strong willingness among employees and travellers to change,” he added.
But in order to do so, travel and mobility managers must convince corporate leaders on the business case behind going green – and this, at least in Italy, remains a hurdle for many.
“Unfortunately, here in Italy, particularly in the big cities, we haven’t understood that sustainability isn’t a “nice to have”, it’s a business,” said Gianluca Santilli, president of Osservatorio Bikeconomy, a think tank focused on sustainable mobility and urban regeneration.
Santilli, who hails from Rome and rides an e-bike to move around the city, pointed to the fact that even BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has acknowledged the business of sustainability and that failure to do so will be detrimental.
“The companies and cities that are not sustainable don’t have a future. Rome can’t become a smart city if there isn’t smart mobility,” he said.
“Let’s not think of sustainable mobility as a ‘Greta Thunberg phenomenon’, but as an opportunity,” he added, referring to recent investments made in cities such as London, Paris and Bologna to encourage sustainable mobility and multi-modal travel.
With its ‘Città 30’ plan, Bologna is set to become the first major Italian city to introduce a 30kph limit throughout most of the metropolitan area. In line with the plan, Valentina Orioli, councillor for new mobility and infrastructure at the Municipality of Bologna, said the city is focused on improving roads and infrastructure to promote more sustainable alternatives for short journeys. This includes more car and bike sharing options, which it is hoped will make MaaS (mobility as a service) a more feasible option for corporates.
In this view, AITMM encouraged its members to consider themselves not only as catalysts to travel policy and procurement reform within their companies, but also as drivers of wider city transformation.
Orioli added that the role of travel and mobility managers “is very important because you have to interpret our choices and translate them into sustainable practices… therefore it’s a strategic role for companies”.
Yet, despite a long-standing decree that dictates Italian companies based in metropolitan areas with more than 100 employees must appoint a mobility manager (read more about the decree in our recent interview with Gallino), the necessary steps towards greening business travel, according to both Gallino and Santilli, won’t happen without further regulation.
Cue the EU’s incoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which will make stringent ESG reporting mandatory for publicly-listed companies with more than 500 employees when it comes into effect in 2024.
In 2025, the parameters will be extended to include large non-listed companies with more than 250 employees, more than €40 million in net revenue or more than €20 million in total assets. By 2026, SMEs will also be required to adhere to reporting standards.
“We need to start today in order to be ready because travel and mobility is a big part of this,” Gallino said. “Non-compliant companies will be ‘out of the game’ and therefore much less competitive, so we need to work together with suppliers to promote sustainable and responsible [travel] buying.”
In this vein Santilli added: “A well-informed mobility manager can become a leader within their company by introducing the right attitude towards sustainability and then communicating a strategy [to reach sustainable travel goals].”
Along with sustainability, industry trends such as bleisure travel and ‘workations’, traveller wellbeing and digital transformation were also addressed during the convention.