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IHG and GBTA Foundation Team Up to Drive Sustainable Business Travel at Climate Week NYC
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
IHG Hotels & Resorts, in collaboration with the GBTA Foundation—the charitable arm of the Global Business Travel Association—convened prominent sustainability leaders during 2024 Climate Week NYC to initiate discussions on decarbonizing business travel. Co-hosted by IDEO, Accenture, American Express Global Business Travel, Delta Air Lines, and Hertz, the event encouraged participants to tackle the challenges of balancing essential business travel with the growing urgency to reduce carbon emissions.
Business travel plays a vital role in the global economy. The 2024 Global Business Travel Index Forecast by GBTA estimates that global business travel spending will reach $1.48 trillion USD by 2024, with projections exceeding $2 trillion by 2028. Yet, with the rising threats of climate change, the need to rethink sustainable business travel is more critical than ever.
Catherine Dolton, Chief Sustainability Officer, IHG, said: “While business travel continues to evolve and grow, the importance of human connection to solve complex problems and drive business growth remains. Our industry’s scale gives us an important opportunity to reduce carbon emissions, however, to make meaningful strides we must work together more and inspire innovation. At IHG, for example, we continue to innovate through our recently introduced Low Carbon Pioneers initiative. The first community of its kind in the industry, this group of low operational carbon hotels will help us test, learn and share findings on sustainability measures.”
Delphine Millot, Senior Vice President, Sustainability and Managing Director at the GBTA Foundation, said: “GBTA and its Foundation are at the heart of building a sustainable future for global business travel. In fact, Climate Week NYC wouldn’t be possible without the collective power of the business travel industry to bring together businesses and policy makers in person to foster change. The continued success of our industry depends on mobilizing organizations through events this like this as well as our new Sustainability Acceleration Challenge to drive practices that materially reduce emissions from business travel.”
Hosted at IHG’s Kimpton Hotel Eventi, the event welcomed over 80 participants from various sectors of the travel industry. Through IDEO’s interactive “Creative Tensions” format—developed with the Sundance Institute—attendees debated key issues, such as whether to prioritize initiatives with the biggest impact or the fastest results. Despite differing viewpoints, there was a shared understanding th …
