More TMCs Getting on Board

Egencia head of associate client services Virginie Pouget said Minnet is not alone—that many companies are at the same stage in the process. 

“Our customers are incredibly interested in the insights and data gathered on their current travel programs and how they can reshape them to be more sustainable,” Pouget said. “Collecting the data is one aspect but providing clear insights and next steps for the business can be difficult. Egencia’s Analytics Studio intuitively brings data together making it a lot more digestible and easy-to-understand for businesses. The platform also highlights CO2 emissions in response to travel options and journeys. This data, especially right now, is what business leaders want to see and act on quickly.”

Nearly seventy percent of the respondents to BTN’s survey relied on their travel management companies and booking tool partners to provide the data and decision-making support required to plan for sustainable travel. Direct engagement with travel suppliers or carbon offsetting companies were much less frequent, at this point, leveraged by about 31 percent and 20 percent of survey respondents, respectively.  

TMCs are clearly aware of the shift to sustainable travel practices and are ramping up their own credentials in the space to capture and deepen relationships with corporates. 

American Express Global Business Travel pledged last year to become carbon neutral. The company expanded that initiative to clients this year, offering preferred terms for carbon offsetting projects through Carbonfund.org Foundation and Carbon Footprint. The company’s Neo booking tool has redesigned its sustainability filters. 

BCD announced last week that it was the first TMC to sign onto the Science Based Targets initiative. The company’s Advito consulting division has received ISO certification for its Gate4 emissions scale, which assists customers in tracking emissions across air, hotel, rail and car modalities to gain a holistic emissions picture of their respective travel programs. The company also touts its SolutionsSource partners in helping clients to mitigate business travel emissions. 

New entrants like TripActions and TravelPerk are also getting into the game with emissions calculators and sustainability filters within their booking platforms. And startups, certainly, are gaining traction here as well. 

It will be interesting to see how traditional TMCs build commercial models around sustainable travel, when recommending that companies not travel becomes as important as recommending that they do.