Global distribution system Sabre and payments provider Mastercard have joined the Travalyst coalition, the not-for-profit environmental organisation whose goals include the standardisation of carbon emissions data in the travel industry.
Founded in 2019 by Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, Travalyst members also include fellow GDSs Amadeus and Travelport and payments provider Visa, as well as Booking.com, Expedia Group, Google, Skyscanner, Trip.com and Tripadvisor.
Many of the members incorporate Google's Travel Impact Model (TIM) in their booking platforms to display pre-booking carbon emissions estimates for flights as well as sustainability attributes for hotels. Sabre and Travelport already incorporate the methodology, with Amadeus understood to be integrating it imminently.
Travalyst's goal is to bring “credible, consistent sustainability information to the mainstream,” the organisation's head of partnerships, Brad West, told BTN Europe at the Institute of Travel Management's Road to Net Zero event this week.
“The industry has not yet galvanised behind one methodology. Our view is that the Travel Impact Model is the best and most credible pre-flight methodology and it is free and available to all [travel providers] via API.”
In a statement regarding its new members, West added: “The addition of Mastercard and Sabre aligns with our partnerships strategy and adds further scale to our mission. Bringing a payments technology leader on board, as well as enhancing our presence among key technology providers to the travel industry, means we are strategically poised to deliver on our mission to mainstream sustainability information within the travel industry to help drive change.”
While Travalyst's focus has to date largely been on the leisure travel industry, it is now raising its profile in the corporate travel sector, said West at the ITM event, and is expected to begin providing post-trip reporting in the near future. The organisation is also developing its hotel sustainability attributes and aims to provide emissions estimates for rail travel in due course and ride-hailing further down the line.
The Travel Impact Model's flight emissions estimates are based on criteria including flight distance, aircraft type, average load factors and cabin class.
Earlier this month the International Council on Clean Transportation, which oversees the development of TIM, announced a series of updates to the methodology. A report from the BBC in 2022 found Google had removed “a key driver of global warming from its emissions calculator” which reduced the estimated emissions ascribed to flights.