The new green eyed monster

Like many industries struggling with the green agenda at the moment, the world of travel seems at first to be at odds with the environment, according to Paul Tilstone, Executive Director of the Institute of Travel Management (ITM)

While the economic benefits of increased travel to a region are well documented, the environmental impact of both leisure and business travellers is a little more difficult to assess. Most travellers believe they are essentially sponges, soaking up the culture and absorbing the influences around them, but in fact the opposite is mostly true with visitors to foreign places affecting everything they come across. The rise of attention on travel emissions has focused this attention on the overall social impact of travel in recent years, and this is particularly true of the business travel sector. The reason for this is that leisure travel is essentially all about experience – and to remove enriching experience from our lives is too difficult a subject to consider at present. The business trip, however, is most often solely a facilitator for economic wealth – it is about getting the deal done or keeping the client.

It is essentially a conduit to drive profitability. So, as the corporate community has now seen the importance of focusing on responsibility, surely we can reduce the impact of business in this area? The greening of this sector, however, poses many difficult questions. What constitutes essential travel – surely most companies only do this already? Can a business survive without travelling executives? Does technology offer good enough alternatives? And, if a company is targeting reduced business travel, where does it stop - Can meetings and conferences be cut too, or are these different?

These are the types of issues corporations are grappling with right now. There are some outside of the UK who are also dealing with this, but the UK is unique. If the Climate Change Bill enters UK law in the coming year with legally binding increased emission reduction targets – a first anywhere in the world - every UK company will need to embark on a huge change management programme, with ‘the nature of doing business’ somewhere at the top of the list for many.

No mean feat
At the present most companies are just beginning to measure emissions from their business travel programmes. No mean feat when there is limited consensus on standard metrics. Existing measurements generally do not take into account age of aircraft, taxi time, load factors or even the radiative effect of the sun in many cases, and this just applies to measuring aircraft emissions. The same issues around metrics apply to car, hotel and rail travel too, let alone the meetings and conferencing sectors.

But some of those who are already measuring are at the same time now already adopting video conference technology and are beginnings to change the way staff think about business travel. Most of these companies are discovering what a complex and time consuming exercise this can be, as once a company has made a decision about what metrics to use the complexity doesn’t stop there. Assessing what type of trips can be cut and methodologies for changing traveller behaviour have to be considered.

One major UK company has embarked on a highly targeted reduction of air travel over the next twelve months. They have undertaken a programme of education and training in the use of Video Conference and have seen uptake of this technology rise as flights have decreased. In many instances, however, they have discovered that the use of video conference technology is actually an upgrade from a phone call rather than a downgrade from a flight. This doesn’t mean it isn’t working at reducing travel, but it does mean that they are faced with a capacity issue and understanding the right uses for video conference technology. Either way it requires investment, either in research and understanding or more video conference equipment, to further reduce their travel.

At odds with our business?
The difficulty with the business travel sector, however, is that reduced travel is not good for business in this market and therefore suppliers are being very slow at adapting to what is fast becoming a new market opportunity. Those with foresight realise that travel behaviour may change dramatically over time (if we have time that is) but that suppliers who adapt and change quickly will be the winners in the end – like the adaptation to any major market influences. This means the greening of their complete supply chain to reduce the impact of emissions on their products and services and the creation of new products and services which help corporations reduce the carbon impact of travel.

Those with blinkered vision, of course, are simply often opting for the quick win by jumping on the ‘off-setting’ and ‘neutrality’ band wagons without thinking about the substance behind these messages – and that’s damaging for the whole industry as corporate buyers start to switch off from such claims. Making rash decisions at this moment in time is a dangerous game to play. The issue may have risen dramatically in the consciousness of business in the last two years, but consumer behaviour takes much longer to change when dealing with entrenched patterns, so it is far more effective for suppliers in the business travel market to make plans for long term changes than take short term advantage.

Vast improvements
Just how the market will change is, however, difficult to say. At the Institute of Travel Management (ITM) we believe that, without vastly improved technology and fuel, the airline and car hire/fleet industries will suffer if targets of 60 percent plus reduction becomes law. Rail, of course will be likely to flourish, as evidence already suggests. But it is the hotel and meetings/conferences sectors which pose the biggest questions. If behaviour does change dramatically, it may not be that these sectors decline – it could be that these they flourish too, or certainly maintain a healthy market. Perhaps, instead of flying multiple executives over for multiple meetings, companies will decamp an ambassador in a hotel in a country for a matter of weeks to represent the company whilst the meeting drivers dial in by video conference alongside this face-to-face ambassador? Perhaps conferences will still remain but will all be locally sourced rather than held in exotic locations around the world? These ideas seem a little alien but then who knows what will occur?

All we do know is that genuine action in the business travel sector is being overshadowed by claim – with limited action behind it. This is likely to change in the coming months/years as buyers become savvier and suppliers realise that it is not enough to off-set - business practice needs to genuinely change. When that time arrives we will start to see what the real impact of the environment is on our beloved business travel market. The longer suppliers take to truly green their products, however, the more likely UK corporations will start to look at cutting travel as much as possible. When legally binding targets come into place lets hope the market is already well on it’s way to assisting British business in achieving them, otherwise the buyers of company travel programmes will begin to wield the axe.

For further information:
www.itm.org.uk/icarus

About the company
ITM is the first worldwide business travel association to introduce voluntary targets for the industry to reduce emissions in line with government targets. The association offers practical guidance, accreditation and awards for the reduction of CO2 emissions across the industry through Project ICARUS.