Travel measures what it controls, not what it influences

Travel companies have spent years publishing sustainability reports with figures that only cover what they directly control. A recent report from Skift points out that this approach falls short: most of a hotel, airline or OTA's impact happens in the value chain, in the decisions of suppliers, guests and destinations that are not under their command.

The article proposes a shift in framework. Instead of measuring only direct emissions and own consumption, companies should design systems that capture what they influence, not just what they operate. That means shared data with partners, metrics aligned across actors and tools that make the real effect of each link visible. The proposal is not cosmetic: without that influence layer, the net zero targets of a large part of the sector are an exercise in partial accounting.

My take is that there is a clear opportunity here for travel-tech. OTAs, PMS and distribution platforms already hold the chain's data. What is missing is the will to share it and a standard everyone accepts. Whoever builds that system first will not only comply with upcoming regulation, they will also sell better to a corporate client that is already asking about scope 3. Sustainability stops being a report and becomes infrastructure.