Podcast 116 – Prince Harry’s Travalyst releases first tool to help travellers & accommodation providers, assess how sustainable they are

Kind thoughts for Meghan Markle

As some parts of the world are opening up, and for the first time in two-years we might be thinking about going on a trip or travelling once again, we have news from Prince Harry’s Travalyst organization that will help us to make eco-friendly choices on our travels.

Per their website, led by Prince Harry and in partnership with Booking.com, Google, Skyscanner, Trip.com Group, Tripadvisor, and Visa, Travalyst is a non-profit organisation "working to identify – and help bring about – the systemic changes needed in order for sustainable travel to be taken into the mainstream. "
Travalyst are not saying don’t travel. What they are saying is travel better and Travalyst https://travalyst.org/ are planning to give us tools to do this.

We recently heard that one Travalyst partner, Google, had put in place an up-dated Google Flights search app. that allows everyone to see a carbon-emissions estimate for nearly every flight in the search results, also displaying the prices and duration of the flight, with flights with significantly lower emissions labeled with a green badge.

This week Booking.com have announced its own launch of a Travel Sustainable badge, further helping travellers to make more sustainable travel choices.

How it works is that Travalyst has produced an initial list of 32 specific sustainable measures over five keys areas: which are waste, energy, greenhouse gases, water use and supporting local communities and protecting nature. Booking.com will use this list, that will develop over time, to assess and give weight to the sustainable practices used by the accommodation on their sites, and using this Travalyst framework to come up with an overall score for the properties.
So probably a bit like when you a book a property or accommodation that is rated as say 3 or 4 star, there will some score given to Booking.com accommodation reflecting how sustainable they are. Booking.com say that the weight given to the sustainable practices for each property, will take into consideration the property’s location and size and the market in which the property operates. They give us examples that water-reducing measures in an area prone to drought or sourcing renewable energy options in a country where that is not widely available, would be weighted as more impactful.

The full list of the 32 measures or what Travalyst call 'attributes' can be found on the Travalyst website.

In a press release Booking.com say that the goal of their Sustainable Travel badge is to make credible recognition of sustainable efforts made by properties around the world, and to provide travellers with a transparent, consistent and easy to understand identifier.

Booking.com say that they hope this badge system will inspire more accommodation providers as well as other partners in the travel industry to take their next step to operate more sustainably.

I have put a link to the full Booking.com article on my twitter account.
Happy travelling for those of you planning on doing so. Let’s just hope COVID cases stay low everywhere…

Please keep listening for future podcasts on all things Meghan, Harry, Archie and Lili. Reach out to me through my blog at https://www.kindthoughtsformeghanmarkle.com/ and on twitter https://twitter.com/JeanetteSongolo

Show written and produced by Jeanette Songolo.
Please keep listening for future podcasts on all things Meghan, Harry, Archie and Lili and in the meantime watch out for other posts on all things Sussex on my blog at https://www.kindthoughtsformeghanmarkle.com/