Hotelplan Group joined Futouris e.V., the tourism industry's sustainability initiative, on February 1, 2022. Together, the partners want to ensure more transparency regarding the climate impact of travel.

The Hotelplan Group has set itself ambitious goals to make its travel offers more sustainable. In doing so, the Group is focusing in particular on climate protection. For example, at the end of 2021, the Hotelplan Group signed the "Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism" and committed to becoming a climate-neutral company from 2022 onwards. "An intact nature and environment form the foundation for intact socio-economic systems and is thus essential for travel. In addition to optimizing our own CO2 emissions, we also want to include more sustainable offers in our product portfolio in the future and focus more on the topic of sustainability when advising customers," explains Laura Meyer, CEO Hotelplan Group.

The company's future collaboration with Futouris also addresses the urgent industry issue of climate protection: The sustainability initiative and its members have decided to make climate protection the focus of joint activities as an industry project from 2022. A first, decisive step toward climate neutrality is transparency: By calculating the emissions caused in a uniform manner and presenting them to employees and customers, more climate-friendly trips can be offered and booked preferentially. So far, there is no climate accounting standard that covers all elements of the tourism value chain and at the same time is accepted as an industry standard by as many partners as possible.

Futouris members are currently developing such a standard in cooperation with the Institute for Sustainable Tourism GmbH, the German Travel Association DRV and other relevant industry players. Based on this standard, CO2 emissions are to be reported uniformly for all travel in the common information and booking systems in the future. The Hotelplan Group supports this objective and would like to play an active role in ensuring that this climate accounting standard is applied in its own company as well as in the Swiss travel industry. For example, solutions are being developed with the German business unit vtours on how to integrate emissions data from travel components into dynamic packaging processes. "We are pleased to be part of this initiative and thus make a valuable contribution to making our customers' travel dreams even more sustainable in the future," says Achim Schneider, CEO vtours.

Prof. Dr. Harald Zeiss, CEO of Futouris, is thrilled about the Hotelplan Group joining the initiative: "The most important task for the travel industry in the coming months and years is to substantially and measurably reduce the absolute emissions of our industry. This can only be achieved if as many players as possible - also beyond Germany - pull together. Gaining such a strong partner as the Hotelplan Group for this endeavor will enable us to move forward in leaps and bounds."