There’s never been more pressure on business travel to be sustainable, which is why Meon is working behind the scenes to bring you a booking tool that allows you to track the impact of every aspect of your trip – not just the flight.
Later this summer, Meon’s new Atriis User Interface will permit you to see not just your air travel emissions, but also your hotel’s carbon footprint before you book, allowing you to make informed choices. You will then be able to offset the entire travel package with our partners.
“I think this will change the way people view travel,” says Meon’s sustainability champion Hannah Leggett. “It will allow people to filter search results by how eco-friendly they are and see the CO2 emissions of hotels.”
The addition of hotels’ green credentials tackles something often overlooked by business travellers. “When people think of CO2 they think of the flying, but it’s not just that, we have a good range of properties that detail their CO2 levels,” adds Leggett. These include some properties certified by Green Key, the leading standard for sustainable operation.
The current offerings for the New UI (by the end of summer) include rail alternatives and hotel carbon emissions (including Green Key certifications). The air/flight emissions will be something we are hoping they launch soon after for comparison at the earlier stages of research, rather than just stated once you have chosen the hotel.
Atriis will have a tick box option offering the carbon footprint of each hotel to permit comparison of their green credentials. Flight emissions are also calculated, and Meon is developing a tool that allows clients to compare airlines’ green credentials.
These innovations are designed to give our clients more insight and choice when they book online. “When booking a hotel, clients traditionally look at amenities and cost. I don’t think CO2 ever factors into it,” says Leggett.
“With the way sustainability is now regarded, to be able to see a property’s environmental credentials so easily with this new feature is massively important. We are hoping that when we add CO2 emission calculations from air travel as well, we can allow clients to insert policies their travellers will have to abide by.”
This, for example, could include a mandate that if a traveller has to take a flight on a less fuel-efficient aircraft, they must then stay in the most sustainable hotel available.
We are hoping that sustainable aviation fuel, once more readily available, will have a significant impact on the overall carbon footprint, but we are yet to know if this will be a feature the customers are able to filter by.
Meanwhile, Meon has partnered with SQUAKE, the carbon calculation and compensation specialist, whose functionality will be added to Atriis very soon. SQUAKE will provide 50 offsetting projects for corporates to engage with, such as energy derived from waste, with a seamless process that alleviates the need for a third party to be involved.
“This is all in the works, it’s very exciting for us because it gives clients more knowledge of the process and highlights what we are doing for them,” adds Leggett. “With all this new information we are able to present to clients, things can only improve from here.”
