Travelport, a global technology company that powers travel bookings for hundreds of thousands of suppliers worldwide, has created a publicly accessible methodology for predicting the per-passenger CO2 emissions produced by an upcoming flight.
Travel Impact Model (TIM) is the first of the UK-based company’s wider product offering that is focused on helping agents, travel managers and travelers easily make more eco-conscious choices when planning and booking their trips.
The methodology, developed by Google in partnership with the Travalyst coalition, enables more transparent, enhanced carbon dioxide (CO2) emission estimates for flights on Travelport.
“Agents, corporate and leisure travelers want to feel more confident in making better travel decisions that put environmental impact as a top priority,” said Tom Kershaw, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Travelport.
“Agents and travelers are seeing different carbon emissions scores and rankings for the exact same flight options when searching them in different channels. As an industry, adopting a free, publicly accessible data framework will allow us all to be more transparent and consistent in the way travel options are displayed and scored based on factors like carbon emissions, environmental certifications, or waste initiatives.
“We’re committed to standardizing the information on the environmental impact of transportation and accommodation options and displaying it in a way that makes it easy for agents and customers to incorporate that information in their decisions,” added Kershaw.
Travel retailers using Travelport can easily compare CO2 estimates generated by the TIM per flight, per passenger, across carriers, at the point of sale based on factors such as the type of aircraft, seat configuration, distance of the flight, load factors and more. These enhanced TIM carbon emission estimates for air segments can be accessed via Smartpoint, Trip Quote and the Travelport API Suite in the flight service information display and in-flight search response views.
