Encouraging travelers to travel less and better
Travel program stakeholders with oversight for sustainability can set goals and carbon targets, drive changes in traveler behavior, apply carbon tax or allocate carbon emissions reduction and removal project costs at the point of sale, and report on emissions and progress.
BCD partnered with SQUAKE, a leading climate-tech company, to streamline carbon emission related action across various industry tools and touchpoints. Our sustainability offering is a game-changer for BCD clients and prospects, making sustainable travel easier and more transparent for everyone involved. Corporate travel programs can:
- Centrally set targets
- Choose sustainability policies to achieve them
- Distribute these across online and offline booking channels for each employee
Solving future problems today
SQUAKE established tooling to provide active nudging and steering within BCD agent frontends and online booking tools (OBTs). For instance:
- Active nudging might involve prompts or suggestions that pop up within the booking tool, encouraging users to select options with a lower carbon footprint, like flights with lower emissions or ground transportation instead of flights when possible.
- Steering tools help shape travel decisions by highlighting eco-friendly choices or providing information (like carbon emissions data) at the point of booking, making it easier for users to choose more sustainable travel options.
In addition to making travelers aware of air, train, hotel and ground transportation emissions using one of multiple calculation methodologies, the tool displays the carbon cost of each trip. While CO2 emissions consumption of different travel options have been visible to travelers in OBTs for some time, it’s been difficult to use the same methodology across the point of sale, itineraries and invoices, and reporting. Our offering solves that.
Helping make travel programs more sustainable
“BCD Travel prioritizes sustainability. Yet, it has been challenging for our customers to make their travel programs more sustainable,” said April Bridgeman, senior vice president at BCD Travel and managing director at Advito. “Until now, our clients have had to spend significant time and energy identifying, selecting and deploying a range of sustainability providers that aren’t easy to integrate together or into their programs. Along with SQUAKE and Advito, we decided to help by bringing what was once a fragmented set of features and suppliers together to simplify the process. And, we added some new features along the way.”
For companies choosing to apply a carbon tax or require travelers to invest in carbon reduction projects or sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for each trip, we now offer automated options to make the process simpler. The offering includes both point of sale and aggregated fee allocation options including SAF procurement or CO2 compensation certificates. Along with driving traveler behavior change, BCD and SQUAKE will provide carbon budgeting, forecasting and reporting tools to help clients set and manage carbon targets. This is key to complying with regulatory reporting requirements like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
“Our goal is to embed carbon emission related action into the core processes and reduce the execution complexity of sustainability policies by our industry leading technology,” said Philipp von Lamezan, CEO of SQUAKE. “SQUAKE is proud to partner with BCD Travel, a reputable company that shares our mindset to bring sustainability to the forefront and solve carbon emissions challenges for more customers, ensuring a brighter future.”
Benefits
As the business travel industry’s first fully integrated sustainability offering from a travel management company, this solution delivers complete transparency at the point of sales – whether bookings are made online or with a travel consultant. The guidance and support for travelers is consistent at every step of their journey, making it easier for companies to reduce business travel emissions through informed choices and behavior shifts.
BCD’s sustainability platform also supports compliance with the CSRD requirements to set, monitor, and report on carbon reduction targets. Travel managers can easily establish policy parameters, track progress, and generate reports to measure their achievements.
Availability
The offering is currently being piloted with Siemens and will be available to customers in the first quarter of 2025.
