Travellers can finally view information on a hotel’s sustainability efforts while looking for a stay on Google, thanks to the tech giant’s new feature called travel sustainability.
“We want to make it easier for you to find sustainable options while travelling no matter what you’re doing or where you are going,” said Richard Holden, VP of Travel Products, on Google’s news blog site.
Google, therefore, has created a new team of engineers, designers and researchers focused solely on travel sustainability. This team will highlight sustainable options under Google’s travel tools that people use every day.
“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,” stated Holden adding “we’ll also contribute to the coalition’s sustainability standards for accommodations and work to align our new hotel features with these broader efforts.”
As claimed, Google will place an “eco-certified badge” next to hotels that are making efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and be verified. As per Google, hotels will have to be certified by independent organisations such as Green Key or EarthCheck to qualify for the designation. It is scheduled to be launched this week.
If a traveller wants to learn more about what specific measures a hotel is taking, he or she may click on the ‘about’ tab where a list of what the hotel is doing, in terms of waste reduction efforts and sustainably sourced materials, energy efficiency and water conservation measures, will be mentioned.
As per Google’s ‘support’ page, “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 for self-reporting and have sustainability practices to report.
The company also clarified that as part of its efforts on sustainability, it will be focusing on practices like energy from carbon-free sources, locally sourced food and beverages, organic cage-free eggs, responsibly sourced seafood, and eco-friendly toiletries.
