Better flight emission transparency on Travelport+

Travelport is making it easier for travel management companies to choose carbon-conscious trip options.

Fragmented flight emissions data require standardisation.
Fragmented flight emissions data require standardisation. Photo Credit: Adobe stock/Senohrabek

Travelport is making it easier for meeting planners to choose carbon-conscious trip options with transparent flight emission estimates, calculated using the publicly accessible Travel Impact Model (TIM).

The global technology company that powers travel bookings for hundreds of thousands of suppliers worldwide, announced recently that the transparent, enhanced carbon dioxide (CO2) emission estimates for flights on Travelport+ calculated using the publicly accessible Travel Impact Model (TIM), has been developed by Google in partnership with the Travalyst coalition.

This new feature helps travellers easily make more eco-conscious choices when planning and booking their trips. Tom Kershaw, chief product and technology officer at Travelport said that currently, agents and travellers are seeing different carbon emissions scores and rankings for the exact same flight options in different channels.

He added: “As an industry, adopting a free, publicly accessible data framework will allow us all to be more transparent and consistent in the way travel options are displayed and scored based on factors like carbon emissions, environmental certifications, or waste initiatives. We’re committed to standardising the information on the environmental impact of transportation and accommodation options and displaying it in a way that makes it easy for agents and customers to incorporate that information in their decisions.”

Travelport joined the Travalyst coalition in 2022 to help drive the standardisation and scale of environmentally conscious travel information across travel platforms. By adopting the Travel Impact Model and using this data methodology for flight emission estimates displayed on agents’ screens, Travelport aims to align with all of the major global travel platforms to provide more transparency and eliminate confusion with inconsistent rankings across platforms.