Discovering Green Tech Features

Republished with permission from The Beat.

The Beat ~ a travel business newsletter
Danbury, Conn.
April 22, 2008

Discovery Communications is one of the first GetThere clients to use the online booking tool provider's environmental awareness components. The media company is highlighting at the point of sale the hotels it deems as "green," sending various messages to travelers about lower-impact travel options and collecting carbon emissions data.

Separately, Travelport yesterday announced a new, "multi-GDS" carbon emissions reporting system. The post-trip tool collects information from multiple systems and provides a user interface for calculations and comparisons.

GetThere Green clients can select the carbon calculator they want to use for measuring and reporting: their own (if they have one), their travel management company's (if it has one) or, eventually, a GetThere option. In Discovery's case, the media company is using the calculator furnished by its TMC, Travelocity Business.

A GetThere spokesperson said the TBiz calculator "uses the GHG Protocol tools for Discovery's reporting." Greenhouse Gas Protocol describes itself as "the most widely used international accounting tool for government and business leaders to understand, quantify and manage greenhouse gas emissions." Also used in the new Travelport offering, GHG is the standard many corporations use in reporting carbon footprint data in their annual corporate social responsibility reports.

Carbon emissions calculations within GetThere Green now can be used for post-trip reporting and for generating city pair averages communicated to travelers. "Over the next few quarters we'll be integrating that data into the shopping process," said GetThere vice president of product marketing and customer experience Suzanne Neufang. "The general view is that it's great information to know, but a lot of corporations just don't know what to do with it yet."

Discovery also will use messaging features to remind travelers about remote conferencing options, suggest rail rather than air for certain itineraries and provide such destination information as local transportation services and "restaurants with organic menus." Sison said the information first would be made available for its top destinations, including New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and London. "We wanted to do this in phases and see how it works and how it is received," Sison said. "We do want to expand to all the cities."

The messaging also "asks our travelers to pause to consider sharing a rental car with a colleague making the same trip, and perhaps getting a hybrid vehicle," Sison noted. To follow through on such considerations, however, a traveler must contact the travel department offline.

Sison acknowledged that this "first phase" is primarily focused on traveler education and that Discovery relies on its travel partners to help it begin to measure and minimize carbon emissions. In addition to supplying the calculator, TBiz provides carbon reporting (monthly emissions by city pair and by airline) and has helped with hotel selection, which now includes environmental considerations.

Discovery relies on preferred hotels to be straight about their green claims.

"Rather than just gathering information on what types of rates they would offer, we asked about their green initiatives," Sison said of the 2008 hotel request for proposal process. "We took their word for it that they were doing something green. Our employees now know that that hotel that we say is green is a green property." For this year, all of Discovery's preferred hotel properties have been tagged as green, and therefore are prioritized above all other hotels within booking displays.

"Right now there is nothing standard out there in the industry, so I have nothing standard to go by," Sison continued. "In future phases, we hope to put some type of criteria together to put them into various categories. ... If there isn't anything standard, then we'll probably come up with our own."

GetThere is one of several travel technology providers developing tools to help clients determine carbon footprints and guide travelers toward lower-emission options. Sabre Travel Network in 2006 began offering corporate TMCs the ability to detail the environmental impact of client business travel.

Meanwhile, Travelport's Carbon Tracker is designed to collect carbon measurements "across multiple global distribution systems" and "merge" back-office information. Travelport claims the system "is one of the first corporate tools to combine industry-standard compliance reporting with an advanced calculator." A graphical user interface allows user to generate emissions data by itinerary and by transport mode.

Travelport built the tool with The Carbon Consultancy and enterprise resource planning firm Agresso. Compliance standards are based on those produced by the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affair and the GHG Protocol.

~ David Jonas

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