ResourcesWorld Environment Day: How Hotelbeds Helps Travel Distributors Promote Sustainable Travel
Did you know that around 80% of global travellers have suggested that sustainability is important to them?
And considering that this year’s theme for World Environment Day was Climate Action, centreing on the need to accelerate sustainable and climate-positive solutions, it's critical that as a travel distributor you're aware of the responsibility to cater to the growing demand from travellers seeking sustainable options; not only for the longevity of the industry, but for the conservation, protection, and prioritisation of the planet.
With our range of travel booking tools and products, our strong commitment to sustainability as a business, and our continuous focus on empowering both travel providers and travellers themselves with opportunities that cater to their specific needs, we strive to provide the best possible travel experience for all.
Let’s take a look at how we’re helping you to help your clients travel sustainably.
Make Sustainable Travel Front and Centre
With more and more travellers aligning their values with their spending habits, it is evident that the industry is moving towards a permanent shift to sustainability.
Our CEO Nicolas Huss suggests ‘travellers are much more conscious of their carbon footprint and impact on the environment than ever before’, and research supports this notion, with around 43% of global travellers willing to spend more for the knowledge that their stay has a reduced impact on the environment.
So it’s important that you’re able to offer trustworthy and approved sustainable options. Not only for ultimate peace of mind, but also to maximise the reputation of your business in today’s conscious industry, and for the betterment of the planet, too.
Sustainable Hotels Programme
Since its beginnings in 2020 our Sustainable Hotels Programme, offered as part of HBX Group, has continued to grow in size alongside the demand for sustainable travel offerings by today's travellers.
Today, this collection of hotels certified as sustainable consists of 10,000+ memorable hotels, resorts and accommodations in stunning destinations around the world. This represents 13.7% of our directly contracted hotel portfolio.
Similarly, our collection of single-use plastic-free hotels has expanded significantly from 500 to 6500+, with new properties around the world taking up the pledge to reduce and eliminate single-use plastics from their operations.
The Sustainable Hotels Programme was established to provide hotels worldwide with a platform to demonstrate their commitment to transforming travel, catering to the growing importance of conscious travel choices for consumers, and facilitating the integration of sustainable options into the booking process for our registered partners.
And by making these hotels easily accessible to our distributor partners and end customers, we’re connecting the industry to a more conscious way of discovering all this world has to offer.
The Sustainable Hotels Programme was established to:
- Provide hotels worldwide with a platform to demonstrate their commitment to transforming travel.
- Cater to the growing importance of conscious travel choices for consumers.
- Facilitate the integration of sustainable options into the booking process for our registered partners.
This leads us onto our next point...
The ‘Sustainable Hotels’ Filter in our Booking Travel Platform
One of the fastest ways for our registered travel partners to access, identify, and promote our collection of sustainable hotels is by using the ‘Sustainable Hotels’ filter in our Booking Engine.
Hotels are only shown in our ‘Sustainable Hotels’ filter in our travel booking platform if they have sustainable certification.
This certification must have been provided by industry-leading organisations such as the World Tourism and Trade Council (WTTC) and the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC); alternatively, these hotels have developed sustainability programmes of their own, with equal or higher sustainability standards.
As such, to be considered elligible for our Sustainable Hotels Programme, each hotel must be validated via a specific methodology that fully complies with European regulatory requirements, meaning:
- All ESG dimensions must be assessed (not only environmental criteria), and
- The certification must be validated by an independent third party.
Hotels can achieve one or can be achieved by:
- Implementing the 12 basics of sustainability defined by WTTC. These basics include Measure & Reduce Energy Use, Measure & Reduce Water List, No SUP water bottles, Bulk amenity dispensers or Community Benefit, among others.
- Providing evidence of these sustainability efforts to their verification partner, to comply with the Basic Hotel Sustainability standard.
- Working with a Certification Body towards achieving full GSTC requirements compliance, the highest social and environmental standards on the market.
This means that, by selecting 'Sustainable Hotels' in our booking platform, you and your clients can have peace of mind knowing that the hotels and resorts recommended are accredited with the highest levels of sustainability.
Not signed up yet? Sign up and start taking advantage of thousands of sustainable hotels!
Communicate your Sustainable Travel Offering Easily
Once you have access to our growing sustainable travel portfolio, you’d be remiss not to broadcast this far and wide to your potential customers. For web-based partners, you can easily communicate your sustainable offerings during the search process to your ideal audience:
Easy Hotel Comparison in the Booking Engine
Once you and your client have found suitable sustainable options for their needs, it might be tricky for them to narrow down their choices.
Luckily, our Hotel Comparison Tool in the Booking Engine makes this simple.
Simply select the sustainable hotel options that have caught your clients’ eye, and hit the ‘Compare’ button in our booking platform. It’s that easy.
Our Booking Engine allows you to compare up to four hotels at the time of booking, offering a quick glance at each list of facilities to help your client make the decision.
Bespoke Marketing Materials and Flyers
Quickly create eye-catching marketing flyers to highlight any travellers’ sustainable hotel choices in just a few clicks.
Insights, our intuitive search and recommendation tool, offers a Custom Flyer Tool makes sharing bespoke promotional materials with clients even easier.
Once you’ve refined your search based on customer requirements, up to 8 hotels can be collated into a user-friendly flyer which can be personalised for customers on an individual basis.
Plus, as you can share any travel marketing materials through a variety of methods including WhatsApp, Email, Downloadable files, even a personalised QR code, Insights gets your promo material directly onto customers’ screens, making sure that you stay connected and convenient for travellers.
Our Sustainable Travel Campaigns
We believe that offering timely, incentivising, and seasonal campaigns is a crucial aspect of being a good partner, and our mission is to provide the best travel products to our partners in a way that excites and delights their clients.
Therefore, it is only natural that we run these types of campaigns to meet your needs and the needs of your ideal audience to meet growing industry demands.
Our campaigns serve as a crucial platform to showcase valuable and sought-after products that keep you ahead in the travel industry.
This includes promoting sustainable options, exemplified in our previous Single-Use Plastic-Free campaigns and our upcoming Environmentally Friendly Hotels campaign which provides easy access to thousands of single-use plastic-free hotels and those with sustainability at their core.
We’ve seen huge success with our sustainably-focused campaigns and are dedicated to constantly improving our offering of eco-conscious options, and our single-use plastic-free portfolio now stands at 6500+ hotels all around the world.
Since launching several ESG-focused campaigns as part of our Sustainability Waves initiative, we have worked towards:
- Eliminating single-use plastics across hotel operations.
- Improving accessibility to ensure a more inclusive experience for all travellers.
- Implementing zero-waste practices to reduce environmental impact.
View our most recent ESG (Environment, Social and Governance Report here or sign up today to begin benefiting from targeted and seasonal campaigns to help you uplift your bookings.
Sustainable Travel and HBX Group Initiatives
Hotelbeds, as part of the HBX Group, takes its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) responsibilities seriously.
It’s important that for any business in the travel industry, you’re getting access to the travel products and wider network to facilitate your own success in your market, as well as working to make travel a force for good.
Amplify your own offering by providing the inclusive, sustainable, and accessible travel experiences the industry is demanding, by working with a travel partner like Hotelbeds.
Here are just a few of the initiatives we’re working towards to champion sustainable product offerings, improve our environmental processes and optimise our contribution to travel as a force for good:
- Beach and forest clean-up activities through corporate volunteering.
- Launch of an environmental campaign in partnership with Hyatt across their hotels in the Balearic and Canary Islands.
- Recognition as a circular economy company by CAEB.
- Renewal, for another year, of our ISO 14001 Environmental Management System certification.
- Ongoing work on the Sustainable Mobility Plan for our Palma de Mallorca headquarters.
Read more about why travel distributors should offer single-use plastic-free hotels here.
So there you have it. While this is a few of the key ways that as a travel parter we make it easy for you to offer sustainable options to travellers, you’ll only be able to ascertain the true value of providing sustainable alternatives to your clients once you begin.
Start catering to the demands of today’s traveller and focus on bringing sustainability to the forefront of your promotion, and if you haven’t already, sign up to access a global portfolio of sustainable hotel options.
