Building a more sustainable travel industry

Sustainability is an increasingly important consideration for the wider travel industry – especially transport and accommodation partners.

For connectivity providers the impact may be less direct, but it’s no less important. After all, travel’s ability to achieve a demonstrable impact on sustainability relies on industry collaboration. 

Here are some steps you can take to be more sustainable, from helping your properties make more sustainable choices to making some different choices of your own.

Encouraging sustainability via the Content API

The Content API allows your property partners to input their adoption of 53 key practices, which are then displayed on their listing for potential guests to see. If they’re a third-party certified property, they will also receive a badge – helping them to stand out further.

See it in action: RoomCloud

RoomCloud actively encourage properties to share the steps they’re taking to become more sustainable via our Content API for three reasons:

1. To improve the online reputation of the property
2. To attract travellers looking for a more sustainable stay
3. To justify higher prices by demonstrating a higher quality of product and service in a tangible way

“At RoomCloud we are aware that more and more travellers declare that they appreciate and even prefer to stay in properties that are attentive to their impact on the environment,” says Silvia Gualano, Marketing Manager at RoomCloud. 

“For this reason, we thought the solution proposed by Tripeden.com was a simple but absolutely effective way for our customers to communicate their commitment and to make it a point of strength and differentiation from competitors.

“Thanks to the quality of Tripeden.com documentation, the development work to support the amenities was very simple. In fact, we’ve just finished adding these options within our content management section, taking advantage of the content API.”

The rise of ‘green coding’

The International Energy Agency estimates that energy demand from data centres and data transmission networks account for 1-1.5% of global electricity use. As the world becomes increasingly technology led, more efficient processes will be required to stop this number from skyrocketing.

This concern has given rise to a growing ‘green coding’ movement.

The focus of this movement is encouraging developers to consider energy usage in their decisions on how to work, such as the length of their code and where servers are located.

Such efficiencies can add up to significant reductions in emissions produced and prove to both existing and new customers that you take sustainability as seriously as they do.

See it in action: WuBook

WuBook has made ‘green coding’ a key part of how it operates. Recently, WuBook adopted a newly developed programming protocol called “Map Reduce” to help reduce the energy consumption of its servers.

Through this API optimisation, WuBook’s been able to reduce data centre overload “substantially” while maintaining software performance and a transmission speed lower than three minutes. 

They also found that by grouping requests in clusters they were able to reduce the calls/response flow with the Tripeden.com servers by 50%.

These changes are in addition to wider sustainability initiatives the company is taking, including using certified data centres that comply with Green Web Foundation standards and use 100% renewable energy.

Taking sustainability steps in your wider company operations

In addition to considering the sustainability credentials of your technical infrastructure and processes, there are many ways that a sustainability focus can influence wider business operations.

Factors such as energy consumption, water usage, and company waste can all contribute to the organisation’s wider environmental impact – as well as bringing an associated (and potentially avoidable) cost. In fact, research by McKinsey & Company found that reducing resource costs can improve operating profits by up to 60 percent.

See it in action: Avantio

Going into 2023, Avantio aims to become a net zero organisation and has designed an overall sustainability plan to help achieve this.

This plan has made sustainability one of the priority tools for everyday operations, giving direction on how to continuously improve the company’s environmental footprint while being economically sustainable too. For example, by selecting measurement indicators – such as water usage per year – they can establish improvement goals for the Avantio community.

They have also sought out appropriate third-party experts to help with further guidance, such as joining the Glasgow Agreement and partnering with a supplier to help make all their events more sustainable.

In addition to this, Avantio works with their property managers to inform, educate and advise them on how to create more efficient processes – from reducing waste and creating more efficient processes to generating savings and working towards better results. 

Avantio’s advice on how to get started:

• Be informed on the real scale of the problem
• Think about waste in terms of cost – then optimise processes to minimise that cost
• Measure progress and continually aim to improve performance