Business Travelers Identify Top 10 Challenges to Green Corporate Travel

March 30, 2009

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Attendees of the Green Travel Summit identified the top 10 challenges they see preventing more green corporate travel.

According to a press release, here are the top issues identified in implementing carbon reducing business travel programs:

Where to begin – The single greatest challenge for many executives is defining a road map of the process to begin greening business travel and meetings.
Perception versus reality regarding costs – Understanding the costs associated with “greening” is often at odds with the internal perception of the process.
Overcoming resistance to change – In many organizations corporate travel expectations are at odds with the change required to reduce the associated carbon footprint.
Buy in from senior management – The need to have top management support of related green initiatives.
ROI – A better understanding of the actual ROI of greening initiates and tracking tools to report ROI.
Securing budget – In a difficult economy identifying and allocating funding for green initiatives is increasingly difficult.
Reporting standards and metrics – As green travel programs are instituted, procedures, technologies and standards to report progress are not clearly defined.
Green washing: Truth versus fiction – Cutting through the hype to achieve environmentally sustainable practices is increasingly more critical.
Buy in from both the planner and the supplier -Establishing acceptable standards and implementing across the corporate travel industry supply chain is needed.
Communicating and educating all relative stakeholders – Once green corporate travel policies begin to be implemented, communicating the program and the desired results to relative stakeholders is critical to success.

The survey results were compiled by Unicomm LLC. More than 160business leaders attended the Green Travel Summit, March 23-24, in Newport Beach, Calif.

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Reader Comments

Businesses looking to become a deeper shade of “green” should start at the beginning and develop an environmental mission statement. It will help focus and guide their sustainability efforts and should not be under estimated.

Taking time to discover why becoming sustainable is important to your company, what your “green” goals entail, and how you will define their success are critical first steps that all organizations should take when they make the decision to reduce their impact on our planet. Please take a moment to read my latest blog post, “A Green Road Map for Executives: Begin with an Environmental Mission.”

Matt Courtland | March 30th, 2009