How we display more sustainable choices to travellers

We're changing how we display more sustainable choices to travellers around the world, focusing on third-party certifications. 

We have introduced a label to acknowledge when a property has achieved a third-party sustainability certification, coupled with the ability to filter searches accordingly. To date, over 16,500 properties have a third-party sustainability certification displayed on our platform. Moving forward, we will no longer be displaying the Travel Sustainable name, logo and levels. 

Sustainability is a core component of Booking.com’s mission to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, and over the past decade we have been shaping our work in this space. Booking.com’s approach continues to be developed in consultation with independent experts and organisations such as the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and UN Tourism, striving to explore how best to address some of the challenges travellers face in making more sustainable choices when they travel. The goal is to find new ways to help bridge the gap between the number of accommodations with third-party certifications and the breadth of choice available in the market, encouraging accommodation partners to progress towards third-party certification. 

Partners will continue to be supported as they progress with tailored educational resources, from a wealth of informative materials on the company’s Partner Hub, including a handbook on more sustainable hospitality, to online courses developed in partnership with UN Tourism. On their individual property listings, partners will also be able to indicate practices they have adopted across categories including water, food waste, energy, plastic and local community, helping travelers understand the efforts underway.

The broader sustainability space has developed significantly in recent years, particularly the regulatory environment, which has been evolving to reflect the central role that sustainability now has in business operations across all industries, alongside growing consumer expectations around the clarity, availability and veracity of information they receive on sustainability. 

In the context of those shifts and in anticipation of relevant legislation coming into place, the updates we're introducing represent an evolution in how we're recognising sustainability efforts – but our commitment to making it easier for travellers to make more sustainable travel choices by supporting accommodations to operate more sustainably remains unwavering. Booking.com will continue to explore the most impactful role it can play in this space, maintaining its support of its partners, customers and the broader industry as they collaboratively strive to make more sustainable travel the way everyone can experience the world.