Turning Business Travel into a Force for Good

For many small businesses, travel is a critical part of their day-to-day operations. In addition to logistical imperatives, it’s proven that face-to-face time with customers, suppliers and team members builds relationships and trust, and can improve productivity and profitability. However, it’s also understood that travelling can have an impact on the environment, so balancing the effects of any business travel – and turning it into a force for good - is well worth considering.  

The escalating popularity of carbon offset programs illustrates how seriously small businesses - and their employees - are taking sustainability. Sustainability is understandably so important to both us and our customers, but we also know budget is a concern and that tackling this topic is a BIG challenge for SME’s.

To help our small business customers reach their sustainability goals, Flight Centre Business Travel has partnered with Trees4Travel, a leading, award-winning environmental organisation that’s on a mission to make business travel planet and people positive. 

Trees4Travel goes beyond the basic carbon offset approach, rather they offer complete carbon compensation. This means they are about more than just trees and more than just offsets. Trees4Travel works to reduce and remove CO2 emissions by planting forests in developing countries, investing into certified renewable energy programs, supporting communities, supporting nature and biodiversity, restoring ecosystems and working towards 13 of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development goals.

When you book a trip through Flight Centre Business Travel,you can work confidently towards your ESG goals with a simple add on, where we’ll turn your business trips into trees for less than the price of a coffee*. A tree will be planted and an investment will be made into renewable energy.

This doubling up of action and investment is important as reforestation takes time, and often the fastest way to counter a traveller’s carbon emissions immediately is to support a certified renewable energy program. The result is a balanced program that puts actions into place to have an immediate environmental effect, as well as positively impact the future health of our planet.

The Flight Centre Business Travel partnership with Trees4Travel makes it stress-free and affordable for your business to get involved in making a difference. It costs just $3 per tree, with the number of trees required to offset your business trip automatically calculated by measuring the length of your trip – including any travel (such as flights, drives, train rides) and accommodation. 

For example, on a typical business trip with a flight of 2 hours and 7 nights in a hotel, the equivalent trees to be planted is 4; on a longer trip with a flight of 16 hours and 14 nights in a hotel, the number of trees is 34. 

Want to learn more about how our sustainability partnership with Trees4Travel can help your business travel?

Once your business has bought the trees, you can visualise and monitor your impact via a dashboard, progress reports, images and videos. You can see how many trees you’ve planted, where the trees have been planted, the total CO2 that has been absorbed, as well as keep a running tally of your emissions allowance. This set of powerful tools also allows you to set your monthly emissions targets and set alerts for when your targets are passed.

The Trees4Travel initiative is a simple, affordable and effective impactful way for your business to travel sustainably and work towards a common goal of harmonising travel with the environment and building a more equitable world.