Together with Corporate Traveller, OfficeMax makes sure that travel is as sustainable as possible.
INSIGHT
Our sustainability vision: Preserving and enriching a world worth seeing
The path to sustainable business travel starts with turning strategy into meaningful action for our people, our planet and our customers. It’s as simple and as complex as that.
“The best thing that any company can do when they travel for business is take the first step and implement a focus on sustainability. Even the small steps, if we all take them, will have a huge impact for our planet and our communities in the future.” - Angie Forsyth, General Manager Corporate Traveller New Zealand
What we’ve achieved so far
As part of one of the world’s largest travel providers, the Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), our goal is to open the world to those that want to see. And that means seeing, and acting on, both the good and the bad to help protect the planet for all our futures.
Corporate Traveller is committed to collaborating with our people, customers and communities to create opportunities to open up the world in the most responsible way. For our people it is about creating diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces. For our customers, it is about supporting sustainable travel options. For our communities it is about giving back in the places where we work, live and travel. And for our planet, it is about reducing our organisational footprint.
Corporate Traveller New Zealand maintains a solid commitment to ensure we operate ethically and responsibly, while supporting our customers to do the same. We have committed to the United Nations Global Compact, and we’re focused on addressing nine of the Sustainable Development Goals to protect the planet and reduce inequalities that exist both locally and globally.
Working closely with our new Global Sustainability Officer, we are also actively increasing our focus on the company’s business practices and environmental, social and corporate governance responsibilities.
These include:
- Environmental: As a company we have committed to the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) to achieve net zero by 2050.
- Social: We have embraced workforce diversity and inclusion – plus health, wealth and parenting support and initiatives. We also support our people to confidently embrace the use of Te Reo Māori in all our workplaces. As an awarded Employer Of Choice, we support flexible working, free counselling and financial support for employees and community. This year we have partnered with the New Zealand The Mental Health Foundation and the Halberg Disability Trust.
- Governance: We have adopted a code of conduct to make every employee and partner proud, guiding our actions from sustainability to raising awareness around corruption, modern slavery and human trafficking.
1. Challenges and reasons around sustainability
At Corporate Traveller we believe that if you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. That’s why we have taken positive steps to align our purpose with measurable goals, while taking our people, clients and partners along for the journey. Turning the conversation into action means taking a deep dive into the travel supplier chain and looking at the emissions produced by accommodation, road transport and air travel.
It’s clear to us at Corporate Traveller that we can no longer just rely on government initiatives and regulations to protect our planet. Every business has a real and moral obligation to integrate sustainability into their business.
So, what does your business stand for? And what do you stand to gain? Here are some of the reasons why businesses are choosing to be more sustainable:
- Improved brand value and corporate reputation
- Meeting consumer demand and gaining a marketing advantage
- Provide a platform for innovation
- Business continuity - anticipating and managing risks
- Increased productivity, saving money
- Enhanced business culture • Improved stakeholder relations
- Legislative compliance
2. Where we can support your path to more sustainable travel
“At Corporate Traveller we are working with our customers to build a more sustainable focus into their travel policies, considering things like carbon budgets instead of dollar budgets, Considering overnight trip vs two day trips, making informed sustainability choices when selecting a hotel to stay in and giving visibility of your carbon in the booking process with the option of offsetting your carbon emissions with our market leading technology.” - Angie Forsyth, General Manager Corporate Traveller New Zealand.
As global carbon emissions from travel continue to rise, the imperative for business travel programs to embrace sustainability and minimise their environmental impact has never been more important. But for many organisations, implementing these goals can appear daunting - manually tracking, calculating, and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions can be time-consuming, potentially inaccurate, and hard work.
3. Enter Corporate Traveller’s OBT, Savi. Our savvy and sustainable sidekick.
Through Savi, our online booking tool (OBT), we work with Tasman Environmental Markets (TEM) which has enabled greenhouse gas emissions visibility and offsetting to become part of our online booking experience.
SAVI’s carbon functionality can include:
- Hybrid and electric battery rental car preferencing
- Visualise the CO2e impact of different flight options
- Granular emissions calculations that consider seat class and aircraft type
- View your company’s offsetting investment and the projects you’re contributing towards
- Push CO2e emissions and offsetting data to live reporting
4. Sustainability trends for corporate travel on the horizon
Sustainability now goes far beyond ‘a focus on the planet’, and in 2023, more businesses will be looking to take an ESG-centric approach when building and reviewing their travel programs. Reducing emissions will remain a key part of the sustainability equation, but with a mindset shift towards more mindful, purposeful travel, it’s about giving employees the information they need to make more sustainably-responsible choices around travelling less and travelling better.
What’s even more crucial in the context for travel with health and safety regulations constantly changing, is how your travel program impacts employee wellness, and overall, your company’s view on diversity, equity and inclusion. The answers will likely drive you to analyse your travel supply chain and identify potential practices in line with broader company ESG strategies. This includes looking more closely at travel policies, booking processes and workflows, sustainability reporting, travel demand management, traveller tools (apps) and education – all areas where Corporate Traveller can help guide and direct you.
If this article has made you think about how you do business, you’ve already started the journey to be a change-maker. But the issues covered here are just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. Corporate Traveller has just produced a new sustainability Whitepaper looking exclusively at the corporate travel market.
