New era of sustainable holiday demand imminent, Jet2 chief warns agents
James ChappleAgents must prepare for an "exponential" surge in demand for "sustainable", "low-carbon" and "guilt-free" holidays, and have both the product knowledge and wherewithal to serve a new generation of more climate-conscious travellers, Jet2.com and Jet2holidays chief executive Steve Heapy has warned.
Addressing the Jet2holidays VIP conference in Belek, Antalya, on Tuesday (28 November), Heapy told delegates Jet2holidays would – starting "in the next couple of weeks" – begin proactively flagging to consumers and agents hotels that have proven their sustainability credentials.
Jet2’s new label will highlight in search results those hotels in its portfolio that have met the rigorous standards set out by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GTSC); around 1,000 of Jet2’s 5,500 contracted properties have so far gained level one certification, or better.
Heapy said Turkey, in particular, was laying down the gauntlet; the government has devised a GSTC-recognised certification scheme and mandated that all Turkish hotels must achieve level one by the end of this year, level two by 2027 and level three by 2030.
"There is an increase in searches on Google and Bing for terms like ’sustainable’ holidays, ’low-carbon’ holidays, ’guilt-free’ holidays, etc," Heapy told delegates.
"The numbers are quite small, but they’re starting to increase. If you look at the increase, it’s exponential, and exponential curves...increase very, very quickly. It is something customers are looking for more and more."
Heapy confirmed Jet2 would make labels prominent on the Jet2holidays website.
"Very quickly, we’ll be able to tell whether customers are attracted to this sort of thing."
He said with Turkey’s hotels mandated to achieve these standards, they would likely appear in search results more prominently and in greater volume.
"By the end of the year, when customers do search thinking, ’I want to go for a sustainable hotel’, every hotel in Turkey will appear," he said. "Only a percentage of Spanish, Portuguese, Croatian, Maltese, etc, hotels will appear. So it’s something when this goes live, more and more hotels will want to do."
The rollout comes two years after Jet2 promised a hotel sustainability labelling scheme that would allow customers to filter accommodation by their progress on sustainability, and a hotel sustainability charter – a key pillar of its sustainability strategy.
Rivals easyJet holidays and Tui are both much further down the line, having added sustainability labelling to their hotel product last year, in August and November respectively.
Heapy reiterated the airline and operator’s aim at its 2022 conference, highlighting the growing demand for sustainable holidays as a potentially lucrative selling point.
There remains a "say/do gap", though, between consumers’ appetite for more sustainable travel options and people’s willingness to actually pay for it, Heapy warned.
"The trouble is everybody wants to go green and everybody wants to do the right thing, but only so long as it doesn’t cost them more money or inconvenience," he said.
Addressing delegates directly, he added: "I’m sure some of your customers want to go green, but if you say to them, ’it’s going to cost this, this and this, and your holiday’s not going to be £700, it’s going to be £900’, they’ll say, ’oh I’ll go green another day’."
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