5% of budget travelers choose an environmentally friendly travel option
Empresa: TURISMO AUSTRIACO
• FITUR participant budgetplaces.com lets travelers choose low cost and low impact hotel options with new carbon neutral booking option
• Spanish travellers have not yet embraced option
• Germans come in first in list of top contributors
• Social networks Facebook and Twitter will help increase number of environmentally friendly hotel reservations
Madrid, 19th of January, 2010 – budgetplaces.com, the leading low cost accommodation website with budget options in over 450 destinations around the world, has partnered with Offset Options. The Barcelona based budget experts offer travelers the ability to make their stay carbon neutral by purchasing a carbon offset during the reservation process. The first results of the project are presented by the reservation portal this week at FITUR tourism fair in Madrid.
Since the program’s soft launch in mid-December, nearly 5 % of all budgetplaces.com customers have chosen to offset their stays. This percentage varies widely between nationalities: German travellers take first place with 7.2% of all bookers choosing to offset their hotel stay, whereas only 1.6% of Spanish travellers have done so since the launch of the program in December 2010. Great Britain, France and Italy lie closely together in the middle all with around 4% of bookings made containing a contribution towards offset projects.
“Offset options for budget travelers have a huge potential”
“Introducing Offset Options through our websites means that each traveller can choose accommodation which is low cost and low impact. budgetplaces.com has been working to provide travellers with quality budget accommodation around the world since 2003. Given the growing demand for low cost hotels, hostels, apartments and B&Bs, we believe that offset options for budget travelers have a huge potential,” explained John Erceg, founder and CEO at budgetplaces.com.
“With the Offset Options carbon offset marketplace model, we aim to make carbon offsets more accessible and more relevant by giving travelers the opportunity to choose a type of offset according to what resonates more strongly with them. It’s an easy, credible way to take action and we believe it’s a great match for budgetplaces.com travelers,” said Luke Miller, Co-Founder of Barcelona-based Offset Options.
10 per cent of all budget travelers will offset their hotel stay in 2010
According to budgetplaces.com forecasts, the percentage of “green” travelers should reach 10% this year. Social networks Facebook and Twitter will play a crucial role, as this is where travelers can easily let friends know about their carbon neutral actions taken during the booking process.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the largest contributors to climate change, and the travel industry is increasingly aware of the “carbon footprint” of its activities. FITUR exhibitor budgetplaces.com provides travelers with the ability to easily and quickly neutralise their travel emissions (for budgetplaces.com this is calculated as 29kg CO2e per room per night) by supporting a range of carbon offset projects including wind farms, solar plants, plus others, all of which meet rigorous international quality standards.
FITUR is taking place from January 19th to 23rd in Madrid. Visit budgetplaces.com at booth 8D04 or online at www.budgetplaces.com.
About budgetplaces.com
budgetplaces.com, part of the EnGrande network, is an on-line booking platform for centrally located, quality accommodation at budget rates. The Barcelona based company offers nearly 5,000 establishments of different categories in over 450 destinations. This means 75,000 hotel beds available at very reasonable rates in the most popular tourist destinations such as Barcelona, London, Paris and Madrid.
budgetplaces.com aims for a target rate of 30 Euros per person, per night, saving travellers an estimated 37 per cent compared to the European average daily accommodation rate (ADR). budgetplaces.com is expanding rapidly, adding more establishments every day and regularly opening up new destinations. More than 21,000 reservations are processed every month and the EnGrande websites register more than 1.2 million hits per month. Turnover in 2010 reached 60 million Euros.
You can follow budgetplaces.com on twitter http://twitter.com/budgetplaces and facebook http://www.facebook.com/budgetplaces.
About Offset Options
Barcelona-based Offset Options is a new online carbon offset marketplace dedicated to empowering companies and their customers in the fight against climate change. Offset Options gives companies the ability to easily pair carbon offsets with products and services, allowing customers to choose carbon neutrality with the broadest choice and most transparent process available. Leveraging innovative technology seamlessly integrated into the existing sales infrastructure, customers can choose among a pre-screened selection of high-quality offset projects, creating positive CSR engagement and measurable environmental impact reduction at the point of sale. Mor information can be found on www.offsetoptions.com.
For further information contact
budgetplaces.com
Florian Wiesinger (florian.wiesinger@budgetplaces.com)
Tel. 931 834 420 ext. 41
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