77% of Business Travellers Believe Their CEOs Can Help On Fighting Climate Change by Curbing Number of Flights

A poll of 2,506 employees from these countries revealed that 77 per cent of respondents said that their employers should fight against global warming, by making changes to their travel patterns and believe they have an important role in their company’s travel policies, AtoZSerwisPlus.com reports. 

In addition, 74 per cent of employees in this survey believe that businesses must set targets and include travel policies, in order to reduce levels of air travelling for their companies. Almost three-quarters of respondents say that by reducing corporate flying, businesses they work for could help to decrease the carbon footprint, with respondents from all European countries confirming this claim.

“Corporate flying habits have changed and employees want a new normal where businesses take responsibility for reducing their share of emissions. Change will happen with clear targets and policies that align with employees’ expectations. This can only help businesses in the current race to recruit and retain top talent,” Denise Auclair, corporate travel campaign manager at Transport & Environment, said.

Fortunately, 62 per cent of respondents who have to fly for their work, said their flying habits have changed – they say they have reduced the amount of travelling they do. Another 27 per cent say they continue to travel by air as much as they used to while 11 per cent say now, they are flying more. 

As the study shows, the COVID-19 pandemic has enabled business travellers to take less corporate flying, which helps low-carbon alternatives. Out of the respondents that are business travellers, 53 per cent of them said they prefer virtual collaboration technologies, while 36 per cent said less frequent flying could help and 32 per cent listed other means of transport as an alternative to reduce carbon emissions. 

“Employees understand the climate impact of long-haul flying and are willing to curb their travel. But they expect top management to lead by example and set ambitious business travel reduction targets. And there has never been a better time, just as COP commences,” Denise Auclair pointed out.

She also said that CEOs and corporate leaders should change their flying habits and use this opportunity to keep air travel to under 50 per cent of 2019 levels, which could help tremendously to cut corporate emissions. 

However, the majority of business travellers or 72 per cent of them, revealed they were willing to fly less for internal meetings for the sake of reducing pollution. In addition, 67 per cent of business travellers said they would consider planning more local meetings rather than global ones and potentially avoid long-haul flights.