As part of our commitment to being a responsible business and supporting customers success in achieving their goals, we ran a week dedicated to sustainability ahead of the national Green Week in November - embedding a green culture into our business.
From live information sessions and showcasing our new tech that helps customers make ‘greener’ choices, to round table discussions with suppliers and electric car test drives, we got our people talking about how we can make Agiito a sustainable business and protect our planet.
As part of our goal to be a carbon-neutral business by 2035, we are making our company future-fit now. We’ve updated our booking tools to give greater awareness of their CO2 expenditure. This includes functionality that allows customers to compare CO2 emissions on air and rail searches and filter by the CO2 emissions of different properties, as well as a green leaf that flags venues and hotels that meet certain ‘green’ criteria.
Green partnerships.
This is added to other business initiatives, such as making e-tickets the default ticking option, enabling CO2 reporting and forecasting in customer MI dashboards, and offering customers the opportunity to offset their carbon with their Trees4Travel partnership – which has already offset 3,500t of CO2. Likewise, we’re also offering this offsetting programme to our employees so they can offset their own personal travel.
We are sourcing and identifying sustainable partners, such as Enterprise Car Hire, who have tripled their fleet of electric hire cars. Lime Venue Portfolio, on the other hand, are rolling out ‘meetings for change’ across the catering at their meeting, conference and exhibition venues: 80% of ingredients are to be British grown, 40% of their menus are plant-forward, with a focus on seasonal fruit and vegetables. They believe in zero waste and they’re working with responsible and fair-trade suppliers in line with their climate promise. Their efforts in creating a sustainable food system to help reverse climate change is part of their commitment to reach net zero by 2030.
Whereby, Accor is working with the planet and the people with gender equality and carbon-neutral building programmes, to eliminate single-use plastic and food waste. They are co-innovating with their partners and local communities. Their flagship Planet 21, ‘Plant for the Planet’, programme reinvests the money from guests reusing their towels to plant trees in the host country – so far 7.2 million trees have been planted!
“To drive positive change internally and externally, we’ve also set up a community team and a sustainability committee. We’ve also made a series of environmental management measures internally with lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning efficiency upgrades, a switch-off policy, transition of the fleet to EV or Hybrid, improved carbon accounting, reducing business travel emissions, enabling carbon offsetting for employees’ personal travel, development of virtual meeting and events tools, and 100% renewable energy in our offices. If we want to empower bookers to make greener choices, we first need to live and breathe this ourselves. These programmes, green sourcing and reporting all forms part of our strategy in becoming a carbon-neutral business by 2035”.
Kirsty Given, Director of Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability at Agiito.