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Carbon pricing in business travel: How to drive smarter booking decisions

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Carbon pricing in business travel: How to drive smarter booking decisions

Amélie Losanes, Managing Consultant, Sustainable Collaboration

Dan Kreibich, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, SQUAKE

While displaying carbon emissions figures at the point of sale is becoming standard across many booking tools, there’s a more effective but underused way to encourage smarter travel choices: carbon pricing.

One of the key benefits of our recent integration with SQUAKE is that it lets travel managers include a carbon price right at the point of sale based on GATE4 emissions calculations. To explore how implementing a carbon pricing strategy at the point of sale can effectively influence traveler behavior, Advito’s Managing Consultant, Amélie Losanes sat down with Dan Kreibich, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer from SQUAKE.

Amélie: How would you describe SQUAKE in 10 words?

Dan: End-to-end CO₂ management solution from reporting to compensation.

Amélie: Can you describe how SQUAKE’s point of sale features support clients in achieving their sustainability goals?

Dan: Our platform allows travel managers to integrate carbon emissions methodologies into a wide range of online booking tools. They can choose from more than 20 methodologies, including Advito’s GATE4 methodology! This allows travel managers to display carbon emissions data at the point of sale and guide travelers to select the options that are most sustainable. Additionally, SQUAKE is able to apply a carbon price during booking which allows corporates to fund compensation projects like alternative aviation fuels, direct air capture, or 150+ curated carbon projects.

Amélie: You mentioned carbon pricing, which many scientists have agreed is an effective way to reduce emissions. Can you break down what carbon pricing is and how this is beneficial for corporate travel managers?

Dan: A carbon price is a fee applied on any polluting activities based on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions they generate. It incentivizes companies to reduce their environmental footprint by making emissions financially impactful. By applying a carbon price at the point of sale for travelers, companies are able to collect funds for sustainability projects, incentivize travelers to travel only when necessary, and allow business units to understand their emissions impact on the business and manage their financial (and possibly, emissions) budget.

Amélie: And I want to add that it’s crucial to understand that a carbon price should not be set too low; it needs to be substantial enough to encourage people to travel when required/necessary only. Travel managers should aim for a carbon price of at least $100 per ton of CO₂. Now, SQUAKE has one of the few solutions we see bringing in a carbon price at the point of sale for business travel. Can you share a little bit about how this works?

Dan: Our solution integrates seamlessly across travel booking platforms. At the point of sale (POS), we enable real-time display of CO₂ data and pricing. Carbon pricing can be set per transaction or per ton based on the actual footprint of a trip booked. Behind the scenes, our system communicates with mid- and back-office tools to process transactions at a cost-center-specific level. This ensures carbon costs or taxes are allocated accurately and efficiently. While the actual travel may be booked on the traveler’s corporate card, the billing of the carbon price will be done at the cost center level.

Amélie: At Advito, some of our clients are already piloting or rolling out a carbon price. While some apply this to all trips, others focus on non-billable ones, and we’re seeing the money spent toward a carbon price go to the ESG team so they can invest in projects to decarbonize their value chain. What kind of projects are your clients funding with it?

Dan: Our clients fund climate projects that align with their sustainability strategies. They can either support initiatives from our portfolio or bring their own vetted projects into the mix. We offer a portfolio of innovative carbon reduction, removal, and avoidance projects, including sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), biochar which is a form of carbon-rich material that locks CO₂ into the soil while improving soil health, and direct air capture (DAC) technology that extracts CO₂ directly from the atmosphere for storage or reuse.

Amélie: How can corporate travel managers better engage travelers in their emissions reduction initiatives?

Dan: There are a number of ways corporate travel managers can foster engagement including:

  • Transparency: Share individual and team-based CO₂ data with travelers to raise awareness.
  • Education: Provide context around emissions impacts and the company’s sustainability goals.
  • Incentives: Reward travelers for choosing sustainable options like rail or economy class flights.
  • Gamification: Use tools like leaderboards or milestones to make emissions reduction interactive and rewarding.
  • Simple Choices: Integrate default options in booking platforms to make more sustainable travel the easiest choice.

Amélie: Yes, transparency is such an important one. We’ve seen firsthand how providing travelers, managers or even business units visibility into how they are tracking against their emissions goals can help drive behavior change. What do you consider to be the biggest challenge travel managers currently face in achieving their carbon targets? 

Dan: The biggest challenge is managing CO₂ end-to-end. This involves gaining full visibility into emissions, setting realistic reduction, removal and avoidance targets, and aligning employee behavior with sustainability goals—all while balancing cost efficiency and operational demands.

Amélie: I couldn’t agree more! I’m so excited that we, alongside our parent company, BCD Travel, are teaming up with you to tackle this challenge for our clients, making carbon emission actions easier to implement across different travel tools and touchpoints.

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