TRX Travel Analytics To Provide Emissions Calculator

TRX Travel Analytics has developed a tool to measure carbon emission footprints based on clients' historical airline data, vice president Scott Gillespie said last week.

Gillespie said the tool can benchmark client emissions against industry averages to compare footprints with best-in-class emission levels had they used more eco-friendly carriers.

While Travel Analytics has yet to determine pricing for the offering and would not disclose clients, Gillespie noted several large companies have been piloting the tool and have helped to set its functionality. "We calculate what a company has emitted and what their lowest possible emissions could have been," Gillespie said.

"It's a calculation and analysis of a company's recent historic airline travel," he continued. "We can measure the total carbon output of the trips that have been taken and compare that to the industry benchmark or industry average for the same exact footprint, and we can calculate what the lowest possible emissions could have been had the company used the lowest emitting airlines in their markets."

Gillespie said the tool calculates the user's travel footprint, "where they travel, how many segments, which citypairs, which carriers," and analyzes fleets, schedules and emissions of all applicable carriers.

Gillespie said the calculator also includes carbon-trading data that tells a company how much they would have to pay to offset emissions.

While Gillespie said corporate travel buyers could use the data in the course of negotiations, carbon emissions are not a big-ticket point of discussion. "Just to put it in perspective, the relative amount of carbon cost to an airline program is not a big number. It probably works out to be very roughly around 1 percent of the ticket cost. My concern is that if you try to put a financial value on it, it won't get the amount of attention that companies may want it to have," Gillespie said.

TRX director of marketing Farrell Harwood said the company would donate 15 percent of the proceeds from the Travel Analytics tool to green organizations as part of a corporate social responsibility initiative.