ABTA – The Travel Association and Deloitte are collaborating on a new project which will help advance the industry’s understanding of climate change, the impact it will have on travel businesses and the actions needed to reduce global emissions.

Over the next year ABTA and Deloitte will be collaborating on a range of activities that will help ABTA Members understand climate change, what decarbonisation looks like across the industry - for hotels, aviation, cruise, ground transport and tourist destinations, and how their businesses can deliver meaningful change. 

Together ABTA and Deloitte aim to engage senior leaders from ABTA Member travel companies on climate change and provide the support to develop a meaningful response to the crisis. The project will build on the work from ABTA’s Tourism for Good report. 

The project was launched at ABTA’s Decarbonising Tourism event today, where people from across the industry came together to hear about the industry’s action to transition towards net zero.

Mark Tanzer, Chief Executive of ABTA – The Travel Association said:

“Climate change is a global threat and the travel industry, along with all other businesses and government, has an important role to play in reducing carbon emissions. We have seen some good progress in recent years – including progress towards the development of sustainable aviation fuels and a number of businesses across travel and tourism setting targets and reporting carbon reductions, but that work needs to be scaled up and continue as a matter of urgency.  

“Through this collaboration we want to further develop the industry’s understanding of climate change and engage senior leaders in what they need to be thinking about for their businesses and the meaningful actions they can take.” 

Alistair Pritchard, Lead Partner for Travel & Aviation at Deloitte said:

“With the imperative to transition to net zero we are collaborating with ABTA on driving sustainability and addressing climate change in the sector. We recognise that the industry has been through an extremely challenging period and recovery is an immediate focus, but we hope we will be able to support ABTA members and the wider travel eco-system understand and tackle the transformative changes that businesses need to undertake. 

“Our collaboration will involve bringing greater clarity for the sector on the changes required to help business leaders plot their course to a more sustainable future.”

For further information, contact:
press@abta.co.uk
 

Deloitte press contact: 
Fern Hammond
fhammond@deloitte.co.uk / 020 7303 2329

Notes to editors

About ABTA
ABTA has been a trusted travel brand for 70 years. Our purpose is to help our Members to grow their businesses successfully and sustainably, and to help their customers travel with confidence. 

The ABTA brand stands for support, protection and expertise. This means consumers have confidence in ABTA and a strong trust in ABTA Members. These qualities are core to us as they ensure that holidaymakers remain confident in the holiday products that they buy from our Members. 

We help our Members and their customers navigate through today's changing travel landscape by raising standards in the industry; offering schemes of financial protection; providing an independent complaints resolution service should something go wrong; giving guidance on issues from sustainability to health and safety and by presenting a united voice to government to ensure the industry and the public get a fair deal.

ABTA has more than 4,300 travel brands in Membership, providing a wide range of leisure and business travel services, with a combined annual UK turnover of £39 billion. For more details about what we do, what being an ABTA Member means and how we help the British public travel with confidence visit www.abta.com. 

About Deloitte
In this press release references to “Deloitte” are references to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”) a UK private company limited by guarantee, and its network of member firms, each of which is a legally separate and independent entity. Please see deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of DTTL and its member firms.