ACTE's Greeley Koch On CSR

Joining The Transnationalfor its debut 5Q, Association of Corporate Travel Executives president Greeley Koch discusses good corporate citizenry in the travel office.

How is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) impacting travel management?

We saw this first in Europe and Asia, and it centered on the impact that corporations have, in conducting their business, on the environment. We have seen hotels say they are not going to clean sheets and towels every day to save on chemicals and the use of water. We're also seeing the European airlines publish in their in-flight magazines how much their aircraft uses fuel and contributes to pollution into the environment. In Europe over the last year or so, it started to enter into requests for proposals (RFP) where [buyers] are asking travel suppliers what they are doing to minimize their impact to the environment. That’s starting to spread now to the U.S. where, on a limited basis, we’re starting to see some CSR language in RFPs. And you’ll see some sort of CSR statement on many companies' Web sites. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives' CSR advisory group is looking at what standardized language we could put in RFPs. Then, we're also starting to see CSR go in a different direction and that's into what's called duty of care. This is coming out of the U.K. right now. There have been a couple incidents in the U.K. where someone coming off a long-haul flight got into a car accident on their way home and the police looked at what contributed to that accident. It was traced back to the fact that these people came off long-haul flights and maybe had some sort of jet lag, and were impaired when driving the vehicle--and so the companies, therefore, share some sort of responsibility for the accident. That is a whole different arena, so we're going to have our advisory group look strongly at that to see if that is limited to the U.K. or if it will spread around the world, too.

What measure might a corporation take in order to reduce the chances of these kinds of accidents?

What we're seeing is folks are evaluating whether they should take a car service instead of driving themselves. Potentially, companies would say if travelers have been on a nine-hour flight, they need to take a car service. It's potentially additional cost, but you have to balance the risk management aspect, as well.

As far as the environmental aspect, ACTE is working with Britain's CarbonNeutral Company. Is the goal there to help corporations understand their "carbon footprint" and the opportunities to offset it?

Yes, so they can say, "Well, we may be contributing more [pollutants] in this area, but we can offset that in this other area." It is unique. We want to give our members access to these tools because some really want to do something, but they still have to support their business mission and travel still has to go on.

For many years, there has been conflict and debate over global warming. Are people settling on "Yes, it is an issue?"

Companies are handling it in different ways and they want to be good citizens to the environment. We’ve seen some members asking their travel management companies about what aircraft people are flying on so they can determine whether they are flying on newer, more fuel-efficient aircraft. I think we'll see more, but clearly, looking at fuel-efficient aircraft, saving water in hotels, et cetera, are definitely things corporations will be looking at.

And as far as the supplier side, have you been able to gauge how comfortable companies such as airlines are with this? European airlines are facing regulation, but what about in the U.S.?

Right, well, in the U.S. it's probably not as prevalent since, as you mentioned, the European Union has taken a tougher stance or at least published some rules around that. I think it's just kind of working its way around the world. We have heard some members putting that kind of thing in RFPs with airlines, and we'll just have to see how that progresses.