Google Will Help Travellers To Find Sustainable Options

Very soon when you search for hotels on Google, the search engine will show you names of those who have sustainable practice in place. Gradually, other travel sectors will also be included under this.

Concerned people have been pushing for sustainable tourism to counter over-tourism and its negative effect on the environment and the local communities for the past few years.  The COVID-19 pandemic has made it essential to contain the spread of the virus and also to restart tourism in the safe mode.

According to Google’s Richard Holden, VP of Travel Products, “There’s a lot to consider when it comes to booking travel: price, health and safety, environmental impact and more.”

Last year, the company shared travel tools to help people find health and safety information.

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“Now we want to make it easier for you to find sustainable options while traveling — no matter what you’re doing or where you’re going,” said Holden on Google’s news blog site.

Google is making it easier for everyone to find sustainable travel options. Learn how we’re helping to make your hotel stay more sustainable → https://t.co/INKAV9CN33 pic.twitter.com/ga6bTFIVvI

— Google (@Google) September 22, 2021

Therefore, the company has created ‘a new team of engineers, designers and researchers focused solely on travel sustainability’. They will highlight sustainable options within Google’s travel tools that people use every day.

Scheduled to launch this week, when someone searches for hotels on Google, they will see information about the hotel’s sustainability efforts. Hotels that are certified for meeting high standards of sustainability from certain independent organizations, like Green Key or EarthCheck, will have an eco-certified badge next to their name, Holden said.

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Those who want to know about the hotel’s specific sustainability practices may click on the ‘about’ tab where a list of what the hotel is doing — from waste reduction efforts and sustainably sourced materials to energy efficiency and water conservation measures — will be maintained.

According to Google’s relevant ‘Support’ page, it says – Hotels can now identify their sustainability efforts on their hotel detail page alongside amenities and health and safety practices. This information only appears for hotels that opt in to self-reporting and have sustainability practices to report.

“Making travel more sustainable isn’t something we can do alone, which is why we’re also joining the global Travalyst coalition,” said Holden. “As part of this group, we’ll help develop a standardized way to calculate carbon emissions for air travel. This free, open impact model will provide an industry framework to estimate emissions for a given flight and share that information with potential travellers. We’ll also contribute to the coalition’s sustainability standards for accommodations and work to align our new hotel features with these broader efforts.”

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The search engine also clarified that because sustainability terms can have a number of meanings, they will be focusing on practices such as energy from carbon free sources, locally sourced food and beverages, organic cage free eggs, responsibly sourced seafood, and eco-friendly toiletries.