As consumers increasingly explore options while traveling that align with their values, sustainable travel is evolving from a niche concern to a driver of business. In a recent interview on BMO’s Sustainability Leaders podcast, Kate Heiny, Vice President of Sustainability at Booking Holdings, shared strategic insights on the challenges, opportunities, and business impact of sustainability in the travel industry.
Listen to the ~26-minute podcast:
Below are highlights from our conversation.
Melissa Fifield: What excites you the most about the intersection of travel and sustainability in particular?
Kate Heiny: Booking Holdings mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. And, of course, in order to do that, we need a world worth experiencing. So there's this beautiful alignment for us in terms of making sure that we continue to make travel available for billions of people, and journeys in the future, and that the world is a place that everyone wants to experience.
Melissa: Help us understand the context and the material issues that Booking Holdings is focused on when it comes to impact?
Kate: I'll just start with talking about the size of the industry ... It's around 10% of the global GDP. That's large.
Now, I would also say that while there's very limited alignment... and that's one of the opportunities, right? There's limited alignment in terms of what is sustainability within travel. I think it's fair, and it's obvious, to talk about carbon emissions and climate as the number one impact, and the largest space to focus. And if we discuss Booking Holdings in our strategy, that is certainly where we have our public targets, is around our net-zero commitment. We will be net-zero by 2040, which is ten years ahead of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Melissa: I want to dig into this idea of alignment, and what does that look like?
Kate: We've seen very good progress in this program specifically, and growth in the number of certified properties over the past year.
What I think is maybe more interesting, or more important in general, is that our travelers are asking for this. So Booking.com does an annual research report that we publish around April, really looking at what travelers are seeking in their travel journey, and how they're viewing sustainability. And our most recent report had 93% of respondents tell us that they want to travel more sustainably, but they can't always do it.
So, we've seen this number grow year-on-year. We've done this report 11 years now, I believe, and that number increases almost every year, that travelers want to travel more sustainably.
Melissa: What makes you the most optimistic when it comes to the future of sustainable travel?
Kate: Since I just joined the industry about two and a half years ago, I've really sought out the opportunity to meet my counterparts and other sustainability professionals in the industry, and I am thoroughly energized and excited by all of the people that I've been meeting. They're brilliant and driven people that are really seeking to improve the industry and the world, and I'm excited to be able to work with them.
Listen to the complete podcast.
Helpful links from the episode:
