About Travalyst
Travalyst is a not-for-profit organisation that is convening a global alliance of leading travel and tourism service providers.
THE TRAVALYST COALITION
The Travalyst Coalition is made up of Founding Partners Booking.com, Skyscanner, Trip.com Group, Tripadvisor and Visa, and recently joined Partner Google.
The Coalition’s mission is to make it easier for travellers and travel providers to make sustainable choices. We are building together towards a uniform, industry-wide sustainability framework that is consistent, credible and easy to understand for both travel providers and consumers.
Our shared goal is to make sustainability reporting – and eventually supply scoring/indexing – a core part of the consumer experience; where consistent information is published globally across all travel platforms.
We believe that starting with online platforms is key to achieving widespread consumer and supplier behaviour change. We strive to build on the success of products like Greener Choices, a sustainability index launched by Travalyst founding partner, Skyscanner, across their global flight metasearch experience that has gained meaningful mass market traction.
THE TRAVALYST ORGANISATION
The Travalyst entity provides independence and neutral governance to support the effective collaboration of the wider coalition. This is vital to ensure the long term success of the underlying data collection frameworks, as well as the syndication of this data between platforms.
The long term goal of this approach is to provide information and tools which enhance access to, and ultimately trust in, sustainability reporting across tourism. In doing so we aim to align and scale best practice among existing approaches; which makes it easier for suppliers to invest meaningfully in sustainability, as well as helping consumers make better travel choices.
In catalysing better choices, our north star is to ensure that tourism has a positive impact on people and destinations; unlocking the industry’s potential as a major contributor to a healthy and resilient planet.
WHO WE ARE
Travalyst was founded by The Duke of Sussex who, in his role as Executive Patron, actively advocates for the group’s shared mission and goals.
Coalition partners Booking.com, Google, Skyscanner, Trip.com Group, Tripadvisor and Visa together seek to create the first versions of these scalable frameworks, and promote their roll out on platforms as a proof of concept.
At the core of the organisation is The Travalyst team who are responsible for overseeing the delivery of the vision and mission of the coalition. The team provides the operating structure for effective pre-competitive collaboration, and facilitates independent oversight of all resulting frameworks and open-source tools developed.
We are led by:
- The Duke of Sussex; Founder
- Sally Davey; Chief Executive
- Our administrative Board:
- Darrell Wade – Chairman; Co-founder of Intrepid Travel, Executive Chair of the Intrepid Group and Vice-Chair of Sustainability of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC)
- Henrietta Worthington – Company Secretary; Solicitor, Vedder Price
- Katie Bradford – Operations consultant and impact sector expert
THE TRAVALYST INDEPENDENT ADVISORY GROUP
To provide Travalyst and our partners with the expertise and guidance needed to meaningfully achieve our goals, the Travalyst Independent Advisory Group comprises world-leading experts on sustainability who oversee all work developed and delivered by the coalition. They are an entirely neutral body and provide assessment and support for all Coalition-accredited products and tools. This council is made up of:
- Dr Sally Uren – Co-Chair of the Travalyst Independent Advisory Group; Chief Executive, Forum for the Future
- Diana Walker – Co-Chair of the Travalyst Independent Advisory Group; Partner, Brunswick Group
- Marten Dresen; Founder and CEO, Good Hotel Group
- Dr. Xavier Font; Professor of Sustainability Marketing at the University of Surrey, and Head of Impact for Travindy
- Jeremy Smith; Co-founder of Travindy, and Co-founder of Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency
- Dr. Anna Spenceley; Chair of IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) Tourism and Protected Areas Specialist (TAPAS) Group. Board member of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC).