World Tourism & Travel Council data for 2025 shows that tourism accounts for 7.3% of global carbon emissions, while Statista figures from 2023 suggest that accommodation is responsible for 10% of that total. Booking.com research carried out in 2024 revealed that 75% of travellers wanted to travel sustainably, but doing so is difficult. Addressing the problem with co-funding from Innovate UK, Sustainable Travel Technologies developed its ecolodgical software. It enables carbon labelling for properties, allowing private travellers and companies booking corporate travel to make informed accommodation choices.

Initially working to create a platform where travellers could book climate-friendly travel, the Sustainable Travel Technologies team found that data on accommodation emissions was limited, and sustainability communications lacked transparency. The limited available data was self-reported and did not comply with regulatory requirements or guidelines on greenwashing, and it was estimated, therefore providing limited insight into which properties had lower emissions. This lack of quality data was preventing travellers from making informed accommodation choices, while failing the needs of corporate travellers with environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets to meet.

By comparison, emissions data for air and rail travel is readily available and Sustainable Travel Technologies wanted to generate equivalent data for the accommodation sector. For that, it needed to create a tool that would allow accommodation providers to monitor their emissions and achieve independent verification of results.

Funding for software and algorithm development

The project received £102,000 in Innovate UK grant funding under the Net Zero Living Programme’s Digital Accelerator Competition, plus valuable input from the digital transformation experts at Zuhlke.

The funding and support were crucial. Rebecca Thompson, Founder and CEO of Sustainable Travel Technologies, says that without it, the software could not have been written because her small team would have been unable to access critical expertise. “It was especially important to have experts in the team during the research and development process, including a data scientist who translated the methodology into the algorithm that automates the calculation of the emissions footprint,” she reports.

Writing the software and developing a calculation algorithm were just the start. The funding also allowed software testing with individual properties, helping the team develop the user interface through which accommodation providers enter their data. A consortium of nine accommodation businesses, all offering sustainable properties and some with Green Tourism certification, formed the user test group, helping define customer needs for the software.

Developing ambition

Helping accommodation businesses transparently communicate their climate impact, and connecting their results into the booking process, now became the team’s core mission. As the system developed, so too did the ambition and realisation of just how important the platform could become.

The new generation of travellers have grown up with information at their fingertips yet reliable, easily accessed data on emissions is lacking in their travel accommodation decision making. Provide climate impact data to compare accommodation options on a travel website and it becomes part of the decision making process; and if it is important to the consumer, it becomes an important marketing focus for the accommodation provider. Ecolodgical is the tool enabling that focus.

The broader scope of the Innovate UK Net Zero Living Programme support has also enabled Sustainable Travel Technologies to begin accurately assessing emissions on a property-by-property basis, while funding continued research and development towards a ‘recommendation engine’. “The grant took us a long way into the recommendation engine research and development process. It will help our customers understand how they can reduce their emissions, providing a great start for continuing the work, perhaps with machine learning and other advances,” says Rebecca.

The future: Automation and integration

Additional funding would allow Sustainable Travel Technologies to continue its work on the recommendation engine. Meanwhile, the next challenge is to automate the verification steps when customers enter their data into the software. Integration with other systems will allow it to automatically gather information on occupancy, from property management systems, and energy usage, from building management systems, for example. AI-driven verification will reduce manual input requirements, preparing the software to accelerate scaling.

Beyond that, Rebecca wants to bridge the gap between accommodation businesses and travellers, highlighting sustainability in a way that makes its benefits tangible. The bridge could be a generative AI agent that provides tailored recommendations on weaving sustainability into accommodation providers’ marketing and online presence. Ultimately, she hopes emissions data will become an accommodation selling point.

It’s about making the data tangible for the traveller, connecting into the bigger picture of why we care about the climate footprint. That means looking at the emotional, human impact of climate change on communities, wildlife, biodiversity and landscapes. These things all really matter, but we also want to show travellers, our customers’ guests, how sustainability can improve their experience. That might be through seeing renewable energy generation, farm-to-table dining, or staying in a natural, protected landscape.

– Rebecca Thompson, Founder and CEO, Sustainable Travel Tech