Travalyst

Travalyst is a non-profit coalition founded in 2019 with the goal of making sustainable travel accessible and transparent for consumers and the travel industry alike. Originally launched under the patronage of Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, the coalition brings together major OTAs, travel platforms, and technology companies — including Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia Group, Trip.com, Skyscanner, and TripAdvisor — to develop shared frameworks for measuring and communicating the environmental and social impact of travel.

Mission

Travalyst's core objective is to establish industry-wide standards for sustainability data so that travellers can compare the environmental footprint of different accommodation and transport options on a like-for-like basis. Without common methodology, individual platforms risk greenwashing — presenting sustainability claims that cannot be verified or meaningfully compared across providers.

What Travalyst Does

• Methodology development — working groups define how carbon emissions, water use, and social impact are calculated for flights, hotels, car rentals, and other travel products
• Consumer-facing labels — partner platforms surface sustainability scores and badges (such as "Sustainable Travel" labels on Booking.com) using Travalyst-aligned methodology
• Industry alignment — Travalyst serves as a neutral convener, reducing the risk that OTAs develop incompatible proprietary sustainability metrics that confuse consumers

Why It Matters for Hotels

As OTAs increasingly display sustainability labels and eco-certification scores, hotels that cannot provide verified sustainability data risk lower visibility on partner platforms. Travalyst-aligned scoring means that properties certified under programmes like Green Key or EarthCheck can have their credentials recognised across multiple distribution channels rather than needing to supply data separately to each OTA.

For revenue managers and distribution teams, sustainability credentials are becoming a soft ranking factor on some OTA platforms — similar to how content score affects placement — and are expected to play a growing role in search sorting as consumer demand for low-impact travel rises.

Related

• OTA (Online Travel Agency) — the primary distribution channel through which Travalyst labels reach consumers
• Content Score — another property-level quality signal that affects OTA visibility
• Preferred Partner Program — OTA programmes where sustainability criteria are beginning to appear as eligibility factors