Futouris and DRV plan industry-wide climate footprint for travel

Transparency as the first step towards climate neutrality

The climate crisis is not just around the corner, but is already in full swing: glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising and extreme weather events such as heavy rain, heatwaves and droughts are on the increase. More and more people not only want to make their everyday lives more climate-friendly, but also their vacations, but are faced with the question of how they can identify more climate-friendly travel offers.

The tourism industry is also faced with the urgent challenge of how to reduce the emissions of the trips on offer, as global tourism contributes a large proportion of global warming with around eight percent (five percent is caused by flights, three percent by the stay) of all emissions.

"The first step towards climate neutrality is transparency," says Prof. Dr. Harald Zeiss, CEO of Futouris. "In order to ensure that more climate-friendly trips are offered and booked preferentially, the emissions caused must first be calculated and presented in a standardized manner. With our new industry project "Klimabewusst reisen" (climate-conscious travel), we have set ourselves the specific goal of enabling the presentation of a standardized industry-wide climate footprint of travel offers at the points of sale as soon as possible," continues the expert for sustainable travel.

"The travel industry is committed to climate protection and supports the German government's long-term goals. Vacation and business travel must become more climate-friendly. The long-term goal is climate-neutral travel. This requires major efforts and broad support. The DRV is discussing its position on climate protection with all its member companies in a comprehensive participation process. Eight online conferences have already taken place to involve the travel industry in this important process at an early stage. Together with Futouris, we are resolutely driving forward the development of a reliable industry standard for the CO₂ travel footprint. At the same time, we are already in talks with other important associations and stakeholders in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in order to put climate protection in travel on a broad footing. CO₂ emissions are primarily caused by the mobility necessarily associated with travel, to which we will therefore pay particular attention - in addition to local accommodation," explains DRV President Norbert Fiebig.

Futouris position paper on climate protection

Futouris e.V. and its members, like the DRV, committed themselves early on to the agreements of the 2015 Paris Climate Summit and the goals of the German government's Climate Protection Plan 2050. With the Futouris position paper on climate protection, Futouris e.V. has decided to make climate protection the focus of its joint initiatives as an industry project. The aim is to substantially and measurably reduce absolute emissions from tourism in order to achieve a significant reduction in climate-damaging emissions from the travel industry by 2030 and complete climate neutrality by 2050.

Measures and goals of the industry project Climate-conscious travel

In the first phase of the joint industry project, Futouris is developing a uniform standard for the climate accounting of travel in cooperation with the Institut für nachhaltiges Tourismus GmbH in order to be able to calculate the specific climate footprint for all travel offers. The aim is to develop a standard that covers the CO₂ emissions from the individual components of the tourism value chain and at the same time finds the broadest possible acceptance and application within the entire German-speaking tourism industry.

In a multi-stage process, the existing methods are first reviewed and gaps identified. This is based on the findings of the Futouris sponsorship project of DER Touristik together with the Center for Sustainable Tourism (ZENAT), in which the best-known methods and tools were analyzed on the basis of various criteria. In the next step, additional calculation methods for potential gaps will be developed and existing methods will be improved. In the final step, all methods will be combined into an overall standard and this will be finalized in an industry-wide coordination process in close cooperation with the DRV so that the standard can be accepted and used throughout the travel industry. In addition, a viable business model is to be developed for the long-term application of the standard.

In the second phase of the project, from autumn 2022, the developed climate accounting methods of the standard will be integrated into the existing tourism IT infrastructure so that the emissions of the various travel components can be calculated and displayed at the points of sale (POS).

Updates on the project

The project is fully financed by contributions from Futouris member companies. All information and regular updates on the project can be found here:

To the project news