Exciting insights and strong impulses: Futouris at ITB 2025

Exciting insights and strong impulses

It was three inspiring days full of exciting discussions, new impulses and valuable encounters at this year's ITB 2025 in Berlin. As a platform for exchange and innovation, the trade fair was the perfect opportunity for Futouris to present current projects and practical solutions for more sustainable tourism to an international audience of experts. There was particularly great interest in the specific approaches to climate protection and human rights responsibility in the industry.

Futouris was represented this year with contributions to two important ITB panels:
The results of the "Climate-friendly product design" project were presented at the Speed Dating with Sustainable Solutions event as part of the Responsible Tourism Track on the Orange Stage. Project partners also presented the newly developed e-learning on human rights due diligence in tourism at the "Empowering the Industry" panel.

Speed-Dating with Sustainable Solutions

On ITB Thursday, Futouris Managing Director Swantje Lehners presented the core results of our project "Climate-friendly product design", which was funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK) as part of the LIFT Transformation funding measure, to an international expert audience at the ITB Convention Responsible Tourism Track.

In the interactive session, Swantje Lehners shared key findings and tools for more climate protection in tourism - including the Travel Emissions Tracker, a digital e-learning program and a comprehensive catalog of measures for climate-friendly product design. Together with Ellen Madeker (Airbnb), Cornelia R. (myclimate) and Nico Nicholas (ZEERO GROUP), practical sustainable approaches were presented at the speed dating event and lively discussions were held with the moderators Matthias Beyer, Heleri Rande, Xavier Font and Prof. Dr. Willy Legrand. A big thank you to Prof. Dr. Legrand for inviting us on stage!

Empowering the Industry - Strengthening Human Rights in Tourism

The second panel was about strengthening human rights in tourism. Tourism is a strong driver of social and economic change - at the same time, companies have a responsibility to respect human rights along their supply chains. Together with the Roundtable Human Rights in Tourism and a total of 14 travel companies, NGOs and associations, Futouris has developed an industry-wide, freely accessible e-learning course on atingi.org, the BMZ's learning platform.

The training is practice-oriented, with concrete examples from the tourism industry, and supports companies of all sizes in implementing human rights due diligence - both in their own operations and together with partners in the destinations.

At ITB, Tatjana Peters (Futouris e.V.) first gave an overview of the project and the training. In the subsequent panel, Katharina Stechl (Roundtable Human Rights in Tourism), Laura Steden (DERTOUR Group) and Jessica Kruse (Helpdesk Business & Human Rights) discussed the following questions, among others:

- How does e-learning support the implementation of human rights due diligence?
- What advantages does the training offer for companies and partners in the destinations?
- How can human rights responsibility be successfully integrated into business practice?

The project was supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).