A recent study by Direct ATPI found that, when asked to rate their efforts out of ten, 72% of corporates scored their environmental sustainability policies with an average of 5.5/10, indicating that there is room for improvement. Furthermore, when asked to rate how important sustainability is to their organisation, the same organisations gave a score of 7.4/10. However, how many are asking sustainability questions, related to their programme?
We can determine from these scores that many organisations have the desire and motivation to add a more environmentally conscious element to their travel processes and policies but perhaps don’t know where to start. It’s in this gap between importance and achievement that the right TMC can really help. First, your organisation has to find that TMC.
Here’s a selection of sustainability questions that it’s well worth including in your next corporate travel RFP in order to find and select a TMC who can help your organisation to implement a more sustainable corporate travel programme in a way that works for you:
– Can you negotiate with hotel suppliers and airlines, selected due to their sustainability efforts, to secure corporate rates and offers?
– Do you have extensive and up-to-date knowledge of sustainability programmes implemented by travel suppliers and airlines currently? As well as those planned for the future?
– How do you share updates on suppliers’ sustainability efforts?
– Are you able to provide carbon reporting as part of travel data reports?
– Are you able to provide bespoke reports? Is there a limit to how many reports can be provided per month/year?
– Can travel data be presented in a dashboard format? Is it possible to customise this dashboard for our organisation?
– Will you provide analytics showing our key travel trends? And advise on how we can use this to develop a more sustainable travel programme?
– Can you provide advice regarding the sustainability efforts of our industry peers?
– Will our account manager work with us to develop a more sustainable travel programme? If yes, how will they do this?