This survey explores environmental sustainability in business travel and looks at travelers’ behaviors, motivations, and attitudes to sustainable travel.
The results are based on an online survey of 1,789 English-speaking business travelers worldwide conducted from July 11-23, 2023.
Respondent profile
Gender: 65% male and 34% female business travelers.
Age: 46% represent Gen X, 38% Baby Boomers, and 16% Millennials.
Industries top-three: 23% Life sciences, 18% Manufacturing, 12% Aerospace and defense.
Company size: 74% of business travelers are employed by companies with 10,000 employees or more.
Top three industries
Geography
74% work for companies with more than 10,000 employees
Employer’s attitude to sustainable travel
Over half of the travelers agree that their employer encourages sustainable travel.
Does your employer encourage sustainable travel?
Sustainable travel options
Taking fewer trips and sharing ground transportation when on a trip are the most common sustainable travel choices encouraged by employers: Almost half of travelers agree.
Sustainable traveler behavior
The most popular sustainable practices embraced on the road are related to hotel stays, where 7 in 10 report avoiding frequent towel change and 6 in 10 refrain from using daily housekeeping. Recycling and going paperless with travel documents are similarly as popular.
Sustainable traveler behavior
While over half of travelers are willing to take fewer, but longer business trips, or try new, more sustainable ways of traveling, only 30% are prepared to pay more for sustainable travel options.
Motivations for sustainable travel
In addition to caring for the environment, 4 in 10 travelers consider company sustainability goals, financial savings and support for communities as major motives for their sustainable travel choices. Personal reputation and incentives are less important.
Impact of sustainability: Business vs. Leisure travel
Sustainability considerations influence leisure travel planning to a greater extent than business trips arrangements. The same is valid for behavior during travel: Travelers pay slightly less attention to sustainability when traveling for work
Satisfaction with employer’s sustainability efforts
6 in 10 are happy about the company’s activities around sustainable travel.
Sustainable travel choices
A quarter of travelers say their employer encourages sustainable travel choices at the point of booking
Incentives for sustainable choices
Incentives for sustainable travel choices aren’t popular: Only 6% of travelers admit they exist
Carbon emissions data
4 in 10 travelers report having no access to data on carbon emissions from business travel. Among travel suppliers, carbon emissions from air are most commonly available, though not too popular: 3 in 10 have access to this data.
Carbon budgets
Having carbon budgets set for travel isn’t typical: Only 4% of travelers say their employer has introduced mandatory or optional carbon budgets.
Offsetting travel emissions
Most travelers don’t have a possibility to offset carbon emissions from business travel. Of the 1 in 20 who can do so, almost half never or rarely offset travel emissions.
Possibility to offset
Actual offsetting
Company sustainability goals
Over half of travelers confirm the availability of published sustainability goals in their companies.
Travel sustainability goals
But only 20% are aware of their employers’ sustainability goals for travel. Around two thirds are not sure.
Stakeholders’ sustainability efforts
1 in 5 provide high ratings to the sustainability efforts of their travel departments, what makes them ranked the lowest among key stakeholders. Meanwhile, the companies with their leaders are ranked the highest. Between 20% and 40% travelers do not have knowledge of this topic
Suppliers’ sustainability efforts
Travelers’ list of sustainable suppliers is led by hotels with a third rating their sustainability efforts as very high or high. Only 14% say the same about travel management companies. The respondents lack visibility into this topic often being unsure how to evaluate sustainability among travel suppliers.
Communication on sustainability
While 4 in 10 never or rarely receive communication from their sustainability teams, this figure almost doubles when it comes to communication on sustainable travel from travel departments.
From the sustainability team
From travel team
Educational material
While a third report receiving no educational material on sustainable travel from their employer, 3 in 10 have access to intranet articles, blogposts or emails on this topic.
Educational material
Natalia Tretyakevich Senior Manager, Research & Intelligence Spain [email protected]
