Climate goals in business travel is the current hot topic in travel management. Travel management companies, online travel agencies and providers of online booking tools are all working hard to make the emissions of business trips visible as early as the booking process. The aim is to show booking and traveling employees how and where the carbon footprint can be reduced. But how can travel professionals and employees really achieve companies’ climate and cost targets? Swiss startup ClimPact takes a slightly different approach. We took a look together with Christian Zeunert, one of the founders.
Convincing bookers to change their “Habit-to-Beat”.
With its cloud-based platform ClimateSmart.Travel, which supports travel professionals in creating offers as well as employees in their booking decisions, Swiss travel tech startup ClimPact relies on incentives and gamification.
The ClimPact founders f.l.t.r. – Christian Zeunert, Achim Liese, Andreas Schubert
Christian Zeunert, CEO of ClimPact’s founding trio, is convinced that “consequent nudging” is necessary so that employees voluntarily choose more climate-friendly and cost-effective flight and travel options: “ClimatSmart.Travel shows one to two reasonable alternatives, for example in the same or next lower booking class, compared to the desired option, the “habit-to-beat”, with the “best match” being pre-selected. Prominent visualization of potential savings and earned incentives in the form of Climate Points “nudge” employees to optimize their choices.”
The potential of ClimateSmart.Travel is that travel agencies and companies have the opportunity to optimize carbon and costs beyond the travel policy. In addition to CO2 reporting, companies gain insight into what savings were actually achieved and what savings would have been possible in the context of the booking. This gives travel managers and the sustainability team in companies the opportunity to verify and communicate successes and to control travel optimization efficiently via incentives.
Automation and connection to TMC/travel agency processes and online booking platforms
Currently, some manual processes are still necessary for the optimal use of the tool. However, we are working together with the ClimPact team to automate these as comprehensively as possible in the near future. In addition, the platform architecture offers various possibilities for integration into the existing system landscape of the TMC’s and booking workflows at the customers – a consulting specialty of travelBrain.
With ClimateSmart.Travel ClimPact pursues an innovative approach to support companies quickly and comprehensively in achieving their climate goals in business travel.
If you would like to learn more about ClimPact’s approach and a possible implementation in your travel agency or company, please feel free to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you.
For travelBrain
Adrian Matt
