The consensus across the aviation industry on achieving net zero by 2050 is that it will require a holistic approach and true collaboration from all actors, from airlines to governments to research organisations and everyone involved in the supply chain. In this article we look at the role Technology partners such as Branchspace can play in supporting airlines’ sustainable objectives and the transition to more environmentally friendly practices in the industry.  

Understand your data to offer transparency and accuracy

The right Technology solution can be a great asset to provide more transparent and accurate information when it comes to the environmental impact of travel. As mentioned in our May 2024 article, travellers worldwide are increasingly calling for sustainable travel options. However, these environmentally conscious travellers don’t always know how or where to find accurate information to make more sustainable choices. This was highlighted in the Booking.com 2023 Sustainable Travel Report, which found that although 74% of travellers want travel companies to offer more sustainable travel choices, 44% of travellers don’t know where to find more sustainable options.

Partnering with the right technology providers can help travel companies gain better understanding of their environmental impact and therefore improve the quality of the information shared with their customers.  

Technology solutions can help bring consistent, precise and credible information to consumers, for instance providing accurate CO2 data on air travel emissions at the time of booking. Tools such as Google’s Travel Impact Model, for example, aim to do just that and support low carbon travel searches by displaying reliable sustainability information on the booking platforms that users already know and trust (Expedia, Skyscanner, Google Flight, Booking.com). In 2023 The ICCT and Google announced their partnership, setting out to enhance the Travel Impact Model further and develop it into a global standard for providing emissions estimates to consumers. A similar collaboration announced in 2022 between Travalyst and IATA focuses both on the distribution of data and the creation of a standardised methodology for calculating route-based passenger CO2 emissions for aviation.  

By displaying clear information produced following standardised methodology, travel companies working with their technology partners will be able to answer their customers’ requests for more transparency.  

Support behavioural change

Technology can also be a great tool to support behavioural change both on the consumer and the travel provider side.  

For travellers, more accurate data coupled with clear UX and UI designs will help make more informed choices at the time of booking. With the right Technology solutions, travel companies can start either indicating which option will have the lowest environmental impact on a given route, or distinguishing between more and less carbon intensive flights. Increasing visibility of sustainable information helps guide consumers towards more sustainable choices and improve the carbon footprint of the industry. For example, since they started indicating the life cycle emissions of flights on their booking platform in 2019, 246 million Skyscanner users have chosen a flight with lower emissions than a traditional flight on their chosen route.

Educating users and empowering people to make more sustainable decisions will also help build trust in a travel provider’s sustainability claims.  

Using data to understand best practices and analyse past performance can provide great insights to accelerate the transition to low carbon travel, helping travel companies become more efficient and understand better the environmental impacts of their operations.

Finally, increasing transparency and communication with customers can be a powerful incentive to improve on performance and lower emissions further.  

Budget management and funding

According to IATA, a cumulative budget of $5tn will be needed for aviation to achieve net zero by 2050. This will likely be funded by a mix of public and private funding and a large part of it will be supported by the airlines themselves.  

Working with travel technology experts and leveraging airlines’ long experience with sophisticated revenue management models can be a great way to help spread the cost of investment into cleaner technologies across various customer groups. The right partners can help travel companies exploit the latest knowledge on dynamic pricing, fare segmentation and micro-targeting of customers to implement new concepts such as green fares, carbon taxes, Frequent Flyer Levy etc. thereby generating much needed revenue to achieve the industry’s net zero goals.  

Conclusion

At Branchspace we believe that as a trusted technology partner for travel companies we have a role to play in supporting the industry’s efforts towards decarbonisations. There are many ways technology can support aviation’s global net zero goals and we are determined to help our customers and their users on their journey to more environmentally friendly travel.  

‍