Live greener by choosing sustainable travel accommodations on Booking.com

According to the Sustainable Travel Report 2022 published by booking.com, 78% of global travellers aim to stay in a sustainable property at least once a year, while 71% of travellers expect to put in more effort during the year to travel more sustainably. Of those staying in sustainable accommodations, 31% said they didn’t know that they existed. Sustainability has quickly become an incentive for the hospitality industry to turn towards more sustainable solutions to ensure the protection of the environment, reduce the emerging climate change, and provide improved well-being of local communities as well as attracting more environmentally aware customers to their hotels, restaurants and cafés.

To promote more sustainable accommodation choices among travellers, several recognised ecolabels have started collaborations with large e-commerce companies promoting travel destinations. EU Ecolabel and Green Key are both European ecolabels that provides certification for tourist accommodations in Europe and globally. Both have entered into agreements with booking.com with the hopes to make it easier for travellers to identify properties that are implementing sustainability as a practice. Travellers looking for sustainable options can simply choose “Travel Sustainable properties” in the filtering section on the website.

The website provides badge levels based on the sustainability of the property:

• Level 1 with one leaf indicates that a property has implemented some impactful sustainability practices.
• Level 2 with two leaves indicates properties that have made considerable investments and efforts to implement impactful sustainability practices.
• Level 3 with three leaves is reserved for those accommodations that have made large investments and efforts to implement impactful sustainability practices, but have not yet achieved an official third-party certification yet
• A certified property has made huge commitments towards sustainability by subscribing to one or more 3rd party verifications such as the EU Ecolabel, Green Seal, Green tourism, Green Key, etc.

The cooperation is a part of booking.com’s Travel Sustainable strategy.