Cost and Time need not be Barriers to Creating Responsible Travel & Events Programmes

With legislation changing and sustainability becoming increasingly important, don’t allow time and cost to be barriers to your corporate ESG compliance

With a myriad of priorities competing for time, attention, and budget, Travel Managers and Supply Chain Managers have always had a full workload to contend with. In recent years, many have seen their responsibilities expand to encompass sustainability, due to the impact of travel and events related emissions on global warming. While a company’s sustainability strategy and travel emissions reporting are now largely embedded in their many responsibilities, the carbon footprint of their company’s travel and events is a metric they are increasingly required to report on to their internal ESG teams, or even external auditors.

In Good Hands

Time constraints and workload make it ever more important that Travel and Supply Chain Managers can rely on their travel management company (TMC) for expertise and support.

With good CO2e data at hand, by liaising directly with their organisation’s ESG team, Travel and Supply Chain Managers can play an active role in the creation of carbon reduction strategies that support their organisation’s overall Sustainability goals.

Legislative requirements make accurate and granular data a must. However, if your business is bound by, or voluntarily reports to the EU CSRD or similar directives, then submitting a concise overview of your travel-related CO2e emissions is not enough. You must also be able to present your company’s strategy to address and reduce emissions, including those that fall under Scope 3 such as the emissions generated by the organisation’s events and travel-related value chain.

Partnering with a travel and events management company like ATPI means you don’t have to go it alone. Instead, you can be supported every step of the way.  Whether you need help with Scope 3.6 (travel) data capture, emissions reporting, reduction recommendations (including buying Sustainable Aviation Fuel – SAF), or carbon compensation by offsetting the hard-to-abate greenhouse gas footprint generated by unavoidable travel, we are here to help.

Cost vs. value

While there are costs associated with consultancy and subscribing to granular reporting tools, it could be a small price to pay compared to the potential costs of doing nothing or too little. This could impact your company’s ability to attract new business, because companies that need to adhere to EU CSRD will be analysing their respective value chains and prioritising working with suppliers who also hold themselves accountable to high ESG standards and can therefore support their own efforts.

In addition, investors, shareholders, and employees all look closely at a company’s sustainability credentials when deciding whether to invest or join the business. If your business underperforms in ESG, drags its heels, or takes a ‘wait and see’ approach, it can deter potential investors and prevent you from attracting top talent.

A good TMC partner such as ATPI, can help you assess all the costs you need to budget for, and potentially help you build a carbon price or budget into your travel programme, covering specific items only, or everything, in a neat end-to-end solution:

• from data collection and reporting,
• to any costs associated with reducing the footprint by switching to airline suppliers with more energy efficient aircraft, prioritising direct flights, and modal shift from air to domestic rail travel.
• If your organisation is looking to make an immediate in-sector (travel) CO2e reduction through the purchase of SAF
• And finally, the cost of compensating for the company’s unavoidable travel and events emissions through carbon credits that support high quality, fully verified and certified offset projects in communities where nature and local communities benefit from the support that mitigates climate change.

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that improved travel habits can also lead to financial savings. Why not enter into dialogue with the top carbon emitters per country or department in your organisation, for example, and ask whether they could be encouraged to make fewer, but longer, trips. This will not only help to reduce emissions, but could also have unexpected benefits, such as boosting their wellbeing if they are very frequent travellers. Reducing business class travel for daytime flights is another potential area for savings.

With an experienced travel and events partner, who will guide you along the way, the future is a lot less daunting. In the new landscape of sustainability transparency, best in class reporting and mitigation strategies will ensure you meet relevant audit criteria and come through with flying colours.