The Business Travel Magazine Feb/Mar 2019

ARRIVALS
SPEAKING OUT
Climate change
Your part in its slowdown
Are suppliers and corporates playing their
part in arresting the pace of climate
change? Possibly not, says Gary McLeod,
who asks what more we could be doing
Twelve years to halt cataclysmic climate
change: so what are your organisation and
travellers doing about it? Are business travel
suppliers doing enough? And how can we
help them perform better?
The United Nations COP24 climate change
conference in Poland agreed to implement
the 2015 Paris climate agreement and has
got China and the USA on-board – who
jointly create 40% of the world’s greenhouse
gases – but the business travel community
has an important role to play in reducing its
own impact on the environment.
It’s easy to say “it’s too big a topic for
me to be able to influence”, but there are
millions of global business travellers who,
if they all did some of the “small stuff”, could
have a huge impact.
The UK’s Department for Transport recently
published Aviation 2050 – the future of UK
aviation, which invites comment from all
interested parties on various topics, including
feedback on how to “support growth while
tackling environmental impacts”. Very
laudable, but 2050 is 31 years away and we
only have 12 years to effect a slowdown in
global warming, so what can we do today at
a corporate and individual level?
The obvious steps seems to be to use more
efficient public transport when aviation can
be avoided. Train travel is the primary option
in the UK and Europe, but in the UK all we
tend to hear is bad news about high fares,
cancelled services and over-crowded
carriages. Many of the train operators,
however, are investing in new fleet and there
If buyers add more
‘green’ questions into
RFPs we will see operators
become more open about
what they are doing and how
we can help them”
is strong evidence of this across the network.
Check out what your local operator or longdistance
provider is doing, and avoid the UK’s
over-crowded roads by trying the train option.
There are of course instances when train
travel is just not practical and cars will reach
the destinations that trains don't – but what
of the availability of electric powered or
hybrid hire cars? Most car rentals tend to
involve relatively short distances, so why are
we not being offered more electric cars or a
range of hybrids by suppliers?
Prices are high and lack of charging
infrastructure are primary concerns among
potential renters but, over the next couple of
years, manufacturers are promising to
deliver sensibly-priced electric cars with
impressive range.
If car hire companies get enough requests –
especially from large corporate users – it will
be fed into their buying operations and may
actually impact their fleet decisions and
depot infrastructure planning.
‘Green’ hotels are a talked about concept,
but you rarely see much evidence of how
they are making themselves more energy
efficient other than the ubiquitous “do you
need to change your towels?” cards.
On a more positive note, it was interesting
to see that a Premier Inn in Edinburgh
recently claimed to have become the first
hotel in the UK to be powered by battery –
albeit a five-tonne lithium ion battery! Its
parent company Whitbread said the trial
would help it meet its goal of halving its
carbon emissions by 2025 and save the hotel
some £20,000 a year in energy bills.
We all know how easy it is to leave the keycard
in, the lights and the television on and
run endless showers, but being mindful of
our behaviour is one easy way we can take
personal responsibility a bit further. If it helps,
act as if you were paying the electricity bill!
And how about the way hotels operate,
often with over-heated hotel corridors and
always-on, inefficient lighting? There are
many things that hotels could do to reduce
power consumption, so let’s start asking the
questions of them about how and when
they’re going to act.
If buyers start putting ‘green’ questions into
travel RFPs we will see operators become
more open about what they are
doing and suggest how we can
help them be more efficient
– maybe even incentivising
travellers to make
greener choices
through better
pricing? Millions
of us, all doing
our bit, can
actually make
a difference.
GARY MCLEOD
Gary McLeod i s Managing
Director of Traveleads and has
worked in the travel industry
for over 35 years across
a variety of companies
and in operational,
sales and
management
roles.
14 THEBUSINESSTRAVELMAG.COM