Companies on a global basis have made slight progress in maturing their sustainability programs, though the largest travel programs have lost ground in their sustainability efforts, according to the Global Business Travel Association Foundation's Sustainability Acceleration Challenge benchmarking report.
The benchmarking study, developed in collaboration with Accenture and in which 285 companies around the world participated this year, gives companies' sustainability programs a maturity rating on a five-point scale, with zero indicating that a company is doing nothing toward sustainability and a five indicating leading practices in sustainability. This year, companies globally averaged a score of 1.4, which is a slight improvement in the score of 1.3 in the inaugural study last year.
Progress varied widely, however, by region and company size, accord to the report. Maturity levels for regional programs in Europe and North America, for example, "dipped marginally, likely due to regulatory changes and economic uncertainty," according to the report. In programs in the Asia/Pacific as well as global programs, maturity levels improved slightly year over year.
The largest programs in the study—those with more than $500 million in annual business travel spending—"have regressed overall" while the smallest companies, with less than $5 million in annual business travel spending, "have made notable progress," indicating they might be "using sustainability leadership as a way to differentiate themselves," according to the study.
Two areas where the largest companies are regressing is in sustainability reporting and setting targets, though both of those areas are showing improvement in maturity across all companies, according to the report. Reporting had an overall maturity score of 2.7, up from 2.1 last year, and target setting's score was 1.7, up from 1.4 in 2024. Other areas that had improvement year over year included sustainable travel policies, with a score of 2.2 compared with 1.8 last year, and carbon budgets, up to 0.7 from 0.5 in 2024.
The report also noted a slight uptick in the use of Sustainable Aviation Fuels, with 15 percent of companies buying SAF certificates in 2025 compared with 12 percent in 2024.
Strategies that can affect booking choices, however, have "stalled," including the use of carbon fees and providing sustainability information in online booking tools. "Embedding these mechanisms is key to enforcing sustainable travel policies," according to the study.