Practical Steps Organisations Can Take For Improved Travel Sustainability

Travel Sustainability

Here are some actionable steps to reduce your travel-related carbon footprint without compromising your goals:

Start With The Big Picture:

When embarking on the journey toward travel sustainability, organisations should begin by evaluating their overarching travel policies and objectives. This means identifying how travel aligns with the organisation's mission and values, while also considering its environmental and social impact. 

• How Key Travel Supports: For those who already have a travel policy in place, we are able to incorporate this into our online and offline systems to provide fully inbuilt policy compliance.   For organisations without a formal travel policy in place, Key Travel provides a configurable travel policy template designed to help you define clear objectives, including a built-in commitment to reducing travel-related CO².

Plan Smarter Itineraries

Efficient travel planning is a cornerstone of travel sustainability.  Each trip needs to have clear objectives and the booker needs to be clear that the trip objectives cannot be delivered via non-travel means, such as a video conference.  Leveraging technology for virtual meetings where physical presence is not critical can be an effective method to save time, money and minimise environmental impacts.

If travel is critical, there are ways to plan the itinerary in a responsible manner from an environmental standpoint.  For instance, instead of scheduling multiple trips for separate meetings or events, consider grouping them into a single, well-organised itinerary.

• How Key Travel Supports: Our travel decision form ‘TripCheck’ is a self-assessment form we created that helps travel bookers decide if the proposed travel aligns with their organisations strategic priorities by assessing the trip’s value vs. its environmental impact, risk and cost.

Choose lower carbon emission transportation

Transportation choices play a significant role in sustainable travel. Whenever feasible, prioritise train travel over flying short-haul distances, as trains typically produce significantly lower emissions. For long-distance travel, opt for direct flights to reduce emissions from multiple take-offs and landings.

Additionally, support airlines that operate newer, fuel-efficient fleets or have transparent sustainability initiatives, such as carbon-neutral commitments or investments in sustainable aviation fuel. By making conscious transportation decisions, organisations can drastically lower their carbon footprint.  

• How Key Travel Supports: We embed sustainability directly into the travel planning and booking process, making it easier for customers to see, compare, and choose lower-emission transport options.

Offset Your Carbon Emissions

Despite best efforts, some travel-related carbon emissions are unavoidable. Investing in carbon offset programmes is a practical way to mitigate this impact. Look for reputable programmes that fund renewable energy projects, reforestation efforts, or community-driven sustainability initiatives.    

• How Key Travel Supports: We offer configurable carbon offset options at booker / traveller level, in addition to offsetting at a travel programme level. We have a partnership with Cool Effect, one of the world's leading carbon offsetting programme providers.  They are a US-based 501(c)3 non-profit NGO focused on carbon reduction with the highest quality carbon credits available. They leverage multiple carbon registers for enhanced options including: American Carbon Registry (ACR), Climate Action Reserve (CAR), Gold Standard and Verra (Verified Carbon Standard, VCS).   The projects they engage with are triple verified by scientific audits, financial project reviews, and site visits.

Combine business and leisure travel

By combining business and leisure thoughtfully into a single trip, it is possible to support travel sustainability. While it might seem counterintuitive at first (adding leisure to a business trip), when managed well (e.g. no separate travel should be added just for leisure), it can reduce overall travel emissions and promote more responsible travel behaviours. By combining work and leisure into one journey, travellers avoid making a separate leisure trip, cutting out the emissions that would have come with a second flight or train ride.  When organisations consider how to combine business goals with personal value, it fosters a culture of "travel with intention."

• How Key Travel Supports: Our customers can choose to expand our standard Online Booking Tool, to include our ‘KT Leisure Travel Service’, a hotel-only booking portal, which enables travellers to ‘bolt on’ personal hotel stays (paid directly by them).

Go Digital

Embrace digital tools to eliminate unnecessary paper waste. Use mobile apps for itineraries and boarding passes and providing risk updates.  Not only does this reduce paper usage, but it also streamlines the travel process, ensuring a more organised and efficient journey. Every digital step taken reduces the environmental footprint of travel.

• How Key Travel Supports: Our KT mobile app is unique in the world, as it is the only mobile app that integrates travel risk management functionality, along with a simple and convenient way to stay on top of trips while on the move. The app will alert you in real-time to any alterations or delays that may impact your journey and provides risk notifications enabling you to avoid last minute surprises and disruption.  Plus, you can view and manage all elements of your trip in one place, from itineraries, flight and hotel bookings to automated flight check-in and gate notifications.