Just over four in 10 European business travelers report their companies have implemented guidelines for sustainable travel, though implementation varies widely by region, according to an AirPlus survey of 529 business travelers across nine European countries.
Only 20 percent of business travelers in Germany in the survey, conducted in December, said their company had sustainable travel guidelines, well below the total survey average of 41 percent, according to AirPlus. However, other countries were above that average, including the U.K. (54 percent), France (48 percent) and Italy (42 percent).
Half of travelers in each the U.K. and Italy said their company had a fixed carbon budget, while 32 percent of travelers in France and 24 percent of travelers in Germany said the same, according to AirPlus.
The survey also indicated travelers largely were supportive of sustainable travel guidelines, with 45 percent indicating they would welcome a sustainability policy and 57 percent indicating it would push them to make more environmentally friendly decisions. Twenty percent of respondents said sustainability guidelines were restricting, and 11 percent said they were patronizing. In total, 63 percent of respondents said they wanted to reduce the environmental impact of their business trips, according to AirPlus.
In addition, the survey indicated strict guidelines against domestic flights, with 40 percent of respondents indicating they were prohibited at their companies. AirPlus noted that figure corresponded with a decreasing share in domestic flights in its AirPlus Business Travel Index—an analysis of transactions processed by AirPlus—which showed 13 percent of flights now are domestic, compared with 20 percent in 2019.