Travel management platform TravelPerk has launched a new
product that allows business travellers and their companies to offset their
entire trip-related CO2 emissions during the booking process.
Customers that choose to opt in to the new GreenPerk feature
will pay €27 per tonne of CO2 emitted by their flights, hotel stays, train
journeys, or car rentals. The platform said this typically works out as 4 per
cent of the cost of a trip, with the money going towards carbon mitigation
projects.
In addition, TravelPerk said it will begin offsetting
100 per cent of its own carbon expenditure from employee business travel.
The company has partnered with non-profit Atmosfair to
deliver offsetting initiatives, which are endorsed by the UN and combine
climate action with sustainable development to promote access to clean energy,
poverty reduction, gender equality, protection of local environments and economic
growth. Atmosfair works with local partners to deploy technology and help
advance national development goals.
Projects that will be supported by GreenPerk include
the construction of household biogas plants in rural Nepal to replace firewood for
cooking; the Solar Home System initiative in Ethiopia that replaces household
kerosene lamps with solar-powered ones; and the construction of biomass plants
in India that use crop residues to generate electricity.
Dr Dietrich Brockhagen, CEO of Atmosfair, commented: “Our
collaboration with TravelPerk is an important step towards climate-friendly
business travels. Companies now have the option of offsetting all of their
carbon directly at booking and make climate a factor for their travel choices.”
In addition to offsetting, GreenPerk has been designed
to provide customers with data and actionable insights to help them modify and
improve their travel behaviour so they can reduce their carbon footprint over
time. Clients will receive a custom carbon report on each business trip along with
environmental education through in-product recommendations.
CEO Avi Meir added: “The environmental impact of business
travel is a critically important issue and something that everyone in our
industry has a duty to engage with seriously. Businesses will always need their
employees to travel in order to meet customers, prospects and colleagues in
person but, increasingly, they also want to be able to manage their business
travel in a responsible, sustainable way.
“At TravelPerk, this is something that we care deeply
about so we wanted to do more than just provide surface-level solutions. Giving
customers insights and data is helpful, but we wanted to go a step further and
offer a credible and simple option that would allow businesses to actually take
action themselves. Through the launch of GreenPerk and our partnership with
Atmosfair, we believe we can help businesses make long-term sustainable changes
in how they travel. We are very proud of this offering, which marks another
crucial step in our long-term ambition to build a world-class platform that
sets new standards for business travel across all areas of the industry.”
GreenPerk follows the launch of FlexiPerk, which allows business travellers to cancel any booking and get a refund after paying a 10 per cent upfront fee.
travelperk.com/greenperk