Smarter travel marketing through sustainability data: Travalyst leads the way
I was at Google’s London HQ earlier this month where the big names in travel, Booking.com, Expedia, Google Travel, Tui, Trip.com, Amadeus and more, gathered for a pivotal moment in tourism’s sustainability journey. Convened by Travalyst, the coalition founded by Prince Harry, the session was all about something deceptively dry but game-changing: data.
Travalyst is building a Data Hub to bring consistency, credibility and compliance to sustainability data across the industry. Discussions were refreshingly practical, and focused on how better data can not only reduce tourism’s environmental footprint but also reshape destination marketing strategies. We’ve already seen the impact of Travalyst’s Travel Impact Model, which now powers emissions data across more than 130 billion flight searches. Now, the coalition’s attention is on accommodation, specifically, how to gather and share reliable sustainability data on hotels.
One of the most compelling sessions came from Ewout Versloot of the Netherlands Board of Tourism. They’ve been using a Market Impact Model to assess the economic, environmental, and social impact of different visitor segments and combined this with behavioural data and seasonality. The results are interesting. British travellers, for example, have a lower environmental impact and are well-distributed across the year - but most go only to Amsterdam. Germans spread out geographically, but all travel in summer. Americans, on the other hand, bring a high carbon footprint and also converge in Amsterdam, in peak. These insights are directly informing the Netherlands’ marketing and product development strategies.
Naturally, I had to ask how Travalyst coalition members will use this insight to work with the Netherlands to support targeted destination marketing. It’s early days, but the potential is enormous. If this kind of granular data is integrated into industry platforms, destinations could market more sustainably, prioritise lower-impact source markets and build year-round, geographically balanced visitation.
In the shorter term, it’s already possible to see which businesses have sustainability certifications through tools like the Because database. But in the not-too-distant future, we could be looking at dashboards that include emissions, water use, and waste per property. That’s gold for destinations, enabling smarter policy, resource planning, training, and even collaboration between sustainability-certified operators to develop low-impact visitor routes.
Sustainability in tourism often hinges on aspiration. What I saw at Travalyst’s event was the start of something far more actionable. With the right data and collaboration between the private sector and destinations, smart, sustainable tourism marketing is not only possible, it’s within reach.