Four expert tips to kick-start your sustainability journey

Sustainability should be embedded within companies’ DNA as standard and should no longer be used as a tool for commercial gain, travel firms were also advised.

Speaking during a panel session at the event, The Sunday Times chief travel writer Chris Haslam said firms must utilise sustainability in "everything they do".

"You can’t use sustainability for commercial gain or to get a leap over someone else," he said. "You just have to do it. Everything we have achieved as the human race is because we can, and could, burn stuff – and now, we just have to stop burning stuff."

Aisling Connaughton, co-founder of sustainability consultancy CYD Connects, advised the industry to try to avoid "carbon tunnel-vision", which is where companies focus only on carbon reduction and ignore the other 16 of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).

"Carbon is dominating the conversation, especially in travel. We have forgotten about the other 16 SDGs and are falling into carbon tunnel-vision – we are becoming blinkered."

She continued: "The climate crisis is not the problem – it is the symptom of an unbalanced governmental and societal system. If you don’t have a sustainability strategy, you will not survive – you have to start thinking longer term."