BookedYet.com to purchase carbon offsets for each hotel booking

BookedYet.com have decided to purchase carbon offsets for each hotel booking through its website. As a company that has a mission to support the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals, BookedYet.com is always considering the impacts of its decisions.

Although taking steps like choosing to operate on data centres that match 100% of their energy consumption from renewable energy covers the bulk of operational emissions from BookedYet.com, a lot more can be done.

The vast majority of emissions associated with hotel nights purchased from BookedYet.com come from the hotels themselves and their supply chains as well as the transport to get travellers from A to B.

“At BookedYet.com, we believe businesses around the world should be taking strong action today to improve environmental outcomes for future generations. By paying for the offsets we can ensure that every night stayed at a hotel booked through BookedYet.com is supporting the advancement of the SDG’s.”

Offsets should not be used to justify inaction

The United Nations have suggested that annual emissions have to reduce by 29-32 gigatonnes of equivalent carbon emissions (CO₂-e) by 2030 – a five-fold increase on current ambition – to get on track to stay below 1.5°C of warming.

Although carbon offsets help, for example through supporting reforestation or avoided deforestation projects, offsets will not achieve deep emission cuts alone. Significant global effort over the next decade from governments, consumers, and organisations from all sectors of the economy is required.

Hotels are implementing emission reduction measures

There are several actions that can be taken by hotels to significantly reduce their carbon footprint across the supply chain. For example:

• Sourcing renewable energy to avoid emissions from fossil fuel generation
• Implementing energy efficiency to reduce energy consumption
• Sourcing local content to minimise transport emissions
• Minimising waste to reduce landfill gas emissions.

Over time, through the help of reduced technology costs, consumer behaviour, corporate social responsibility, governmental policy and capacity building, deep emission reduction will be realised by hotels, as well as in the rest of the economy.

Innovative and early adopter hotels are already beginning to take actions to reduce emissions. This can be seen in Figure 1 below which presents some of the findings from the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking (CHSB).

Figure 1: Carbon Footprint of One Night Stay in the United States – Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (kgCO₂-e)

Source 1: Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking (CHSB) study (2017-2019)

BookedYet.com shows how carbon offsets for each hotel booking can resulting in net-positive emissions

As hotels listing on BookedYet.com shift towards net-zero emissions, BookedYet.com will continue to invest in projects that support emission reductions. By investing in emission reduction projects for each hotel booking beyond the point where hotels have taken steps to reduce emissions will result in a net-positive emissions effect for nights stayed.

Figure 2: Carbon Offsets Purchased by BookedYet.com vs Emission Reductions by Hotels

Source 2: BookedYet.com

Figure 2 above shows the forecasted commitment of purchasing carbon offsets for hotel nights booked through BookedYet.com as well as the additional actions to support a net-positive goal of emission reductions.

BookedYet.com will purchase carbon offsets based on the estimated emissions from nights stayed at hotels booked its online platform, represented by the light green in Figure 2. As hotels take actions to reduce their emissions over time, BookedYet.com will continue to support emission reduction projects to support a net-positive goal of emission reductions for each night stayed.

Hotel emission reduction actions, represented by the grey shaded area in Figure 2 above, can be seen to follow a traditional ‘S’ curve of market adoption for emission reduction actions. This assumes innovators and early adopters take fast action, followed by mass adoption by the early and late majority and later action by the laggards.