Skift Take
Travalyst’s challenge in hospitality will be in trying to make itself a leader in sustainability measurement. This will be a tougher sell than flights.
If you search Google Flights for a San Juan to Newark flight on September 27, you can readily see that the Frontier flights have lower-than-average estimated emissions, while the JetBlue and United flights have average emissions.
If you are a traveler that values sustainability, the fact that the Frontier flights have emissions 24% lower than average may be a decisive factor in your flight choice.
Google Flights and booking sites such as Expedia and Booking.com, use a Travel Impact Model developed by Google and refined by the Prince Harry-founded Travalyst coalition as a foundation for this data.
On its fifth anniversary, the Travalyst coalition announced Tuesday that it is expanding beyond flight emission data, and will turn its attention to hospitality sustainability data over the next five years.
The coalition, which includes, Google, Expedia, Booking.com, Trip.com Group, Sabre, Visa, Mastercard, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner, Amadeus and Travelport, said earlier this month that its flight emissions data has been viewable as part of 65 billion online searches around the world.
Hospitality Could Be Tougher Than Airlines
“The accommodation sector is complex with a multitude of sources and datapoints and so it is fundamental that we work closely with the industry, including the coalition partners, to determine which sources should be prioritized,” a Travalyst spokesperson said about the hospitality push. “We will support the scaling of this information through our coalition partners and beyond, which means travelers can start to make more informed choices.”
Adding to the complexity, while there are several thousand airlines in the world, there are hundreds of thousands of hotels, and there are millions of short-term rentals, too.
To support its work over the next few years, Travalyst announced that it acquired the Weeva sustainability management platform. The SaaS platform is designed to help tourism businesses adopt, measure and track sustainability practices.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Travalyst acquired the intellectual property; the Weeva team will not join Travalyst, the spokesperson said.
