If you ask business travel experts, the topics of sustainability and travel safety will be at the top of the agenda in 2024, right behind process optimization. I have already written about this in another article on the topic of sustainable business travel here on the PASS Travel Industry Blog. New directives from the European Union create requirements for companies to pay more attention to their carbon footprint and establish reporting functions. The pressure on travel and business travel providers to reduce their carbon emissions is increasing. Yet success can be achieved quickly with little effort, as our interview shows:
Shaping the future of sustainable business travel
With the claim “Trusted technology to achieve your carbon targets”, the German company SQUAKE, based in Berlin, has dedicated itself entirely to the topic of “sustainability in the travel process”. The SQUAKE team was also recently recognized for its work by the BTN Group with the Business Travel Sustainability Award Europe 2024 in the “Sustainability Innovation” category. We spoke to Dan Kreibich, Founder & CPO of SQUAKE, about the matter.
Hi Dan, with SQUAKE’s technology, CO2Â information can be collected, evaluated and mitigated directly from the travel process. Customers also receive certificates for this. How successful is this model and how important is it likely to become in the future?
Dan Kreibich: Policies like the EU’s CSRD and climate targets, such as the commitment to SBTi, prompt companies to disclose their carbon emissions and adopt more sustainable practices. This is where we come in. SQUAKE started within the airline industry and has since diversified to support multiple verticals, from logistics to business travel, helping leaders in each sector. We serve notable clients like Airbnb, HRS, DB Schenker, AirPlus, and CWT, among others. Additionally, we recently launched an app on the SAP Concur marketplace to address corporates’ biggest challenges: consolidating all their travel and carbon data in one place, providing POS CO2 visibility, and offering an all-in-one platform for CO2 calculations, CO2 reporting, and CO2 compensations.
Our model has been successfully adopted by companies across various industries, regions, and sizes. It is set to become increasingly important due to regulatory, stakeholder, and client pressures. We are also among the top 10 largest intermediary service providers on VDR, underscoring our commitment to transparency. A little recent highlight which you already mentioned is that we received the Sustainability Innovation Award by BTN Group this year, which is a significant part of our success story.
You have already saved your partner Lufthansa Group substantial CO2Â amounts, which you have been supporting in these processes for three years. What do you estimate? On average, how many percents can companies save on their own CO2 consumption as soon as they start using a digital solution?
Kreibich: In general, the potential CO2 savings depend on the specific company we are working with. Typically, companies begin by understanding their current CO2 emissions. Once they have this baseline, they can set goals and adjust their behavior accordingly. There are different solutions available, and we have observed a wide range of outcomes. Some companies achieve single-digit percentage reductions, while others implement solutions that allow them to compensate or reduce up to 100 % of their emissions.
The latter scenario is the mid- to long-term goal for many companies, achieved step by step either by investing directly as a company or by engaging their customers in the process.
Reduction efforts often involve using alternatives like Sustainable Fuels, which can achieve up to an 80 % reduction in CO2 emissions. Remaining emissions can be compensated or removed through innovative technologies like biochar or direct air capture. We offer a curated portfolio of over 150 CO2 projects across various geographies and price points.
We at PASS also want to integrate your technology into our systems in 2024 and provide the CO2 data in our customers’ booking processes. What added value is this likely to generate for the respective travel management agencies?
Kreibich:Â For your customers, you can help them solve CO2 by covering these 5 essential steps:
- Create a baseline with historic CO2 reports
- Set CO2 targets and budgets
- Activate CO2 steering and nudging tools
- Measure and monitor CO2 progress
- Close gap with CO2 compensations and reductions
For you (PASS):
- Better consult corporate travelers based on their carbon and travel data, to help them understand, track and reduce CO2 and eventually meet their carbon targets.
- Understand and optimize your business travel.
PASS SolutionWorld Travel ... and CO2-Data
The PASS SolutionWorld Travel is a technical vehicle to connect the relevant players in the market and to make today's world available as efficiently and precisely as possible for the industry. The primary topic is to make the content of the various providers in the market bookable through a uniform process – either via the multi-source microservices API (iXX1) or directly in a uniform booking interface (such as the Travel Agent Desktop) and to digitally map the upstream and downstream processes and integrate the relevant players.
Short elevator pitch: Why is SQUAKE the right provider in the market?
Kreibich: CO2 targets? SQUAKE is your all-in-one solution to solve your CO2 topics:
- CO2 Calculations: for any travel activity
- CO2 Compensation: 150+ curated carbon projects, such as Direct Air Capture or Sustainable Aviation Fuel;
- CO2 Reporting: complete, aggregated and synced with your BI tool;Â
- CO2 at POS: integrate anywhere, no matter if on- or offline.Â
All certified, from Information Security (ISO 2700) to our Verified Carbon Management Platform (TN-CC-020).
Thanks for the interview!
About Dan Kreibich, CPO and Co-Founder of SQUAKE
Pictures: Shutterstock, SQUAKE
