Andreas Slettvoll, CEO of CHOOOSE, has been busy forming various partnerships with various suppliers across the travel ecosystem to underline the importance of transparent climate data to support sustainable travel. He shares more about the how far the company has come in five years
CHOOOSE was founded in 2017, but to be honest, I’ve only started seeing the company mentioned more and more now. What have you been up to in the last five years?
Effective and reliable software and solutions take time to cultivate properly so we have spent much of our efforts these last few years developing our climate solution portfolio.
Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic drastically reduced international travel, so we are now seeing momentum and demand for travel continue to grow. We are fortunate to have had the support of investors who believed in CHOOOSE’s solution and mission throughout our journey since 2017.
We have partnered with airlines and travel companies across the globe including Finnair, Air Canada, British Airways, Iberia, Booking.com, SAP Concur, Amadeus and Japan Airlines, supporting them with climate solutions that are easy to integrate and can be adapted based on the needs of the company. This extends across carbon removals, verified offsets, and investment in Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF). We look forward to taking our offer to new heights now that the travel recovery boom has come to fruition.
CHOOOSE recently signed partnerships with SAP Concur and Amadeus. How did the talks come about, and how do companies sign up with you?
With some partnerships, companies approach us because of partners or employees with a strong network within the industry. With others, it has been a result of our team reaching out to potential partners and setting up conversations about the travel industry’s drive toward sustainability. We are now thrilled to be in a position where more and more companies in the travel ecosystem are approaching us to be able to offer real sustainability options to their customers.
Amadeus invested in CHOOOSE having seen our work with its customers. With Amadeus, CHOOOSE shared a commitment to being transparent about emissions and reporting, so the synergy between companies was there from the beginning. Other investors of CHOOOSE such as the founders of Kayak and Tripadvisor have also been supportive in helping us to reach the market as well.
How far has CHOOOSE come and are you happy with what you have achieved over the last five years?
We are very proud of how CHOOOSE has scaled over the past five years – to have a global network with partnerships across industry powerhouses such as British Airways, Japan Airlines, Trip.com and Booking.com is an incredible achievement and one that we hope to keep building on. This network, along with the technology we have built and continue to refine in line with the latest emissions and calculation methodologies, is a testament to the hard work of our team.
When launching CHOOOSE, we identified our mission as closing the gap between climate intention and climate action. By enabling businesses and travellers to pinpoint their carbon footprint and actively tackle this through a range of climate solutions, we have spent the past five years making more and more progress with this goal.
Corporate travel is unfortunately not a sustainable action. How does CHOOOSE help to make the industry become more sustainable, and what can corporates do outside of CHOOOSE?
You cannot really manage what you do not measure. We help to give our partners guidance and support their teams when it comes to introducing and implementing solutions. Our portals provide in-depth carbon reduction guides as a starting point for businesses, and we also provide other educational material and content, such as our recent co-authored blog post series with SAP Concur that aimed to educate corporate customers on how to reduce emissions during travel.
Our customers are receptive to implementing measures to educate corporations on how to mitigate their environmental impact. Towards the end of October 2022, British Airways announced that the updates to its carbon offsetting CO2llaborate platform, a result of its partnership with CHOOOSE, would offer corporate customers a dedicated climate programme to measure, reduce and manage emissions associated with business flying.
What are some of the challenges CHOOOSE faces in getting more large companies on board? How do you convince them?
With sustainability increasingly prioritised within the travel industry, we have found that many larger corporations are open to receiving support when it comes to managing and mitigating carbon emissions. It is no longer feasible for organisations, regardless of size, to ignore the climate crisis on their doorstep.
Following the Covid pandemic, however, some companies lack the resources to launch independent initiatives, so CHOOOSE takes on a unique role by acting as an in-house sustainability team so we can support them on the end-to-end journey of reducing emissions.
Where does CHOOOSE see itself in say, 10 years, in relation to the business travel industry?
With the Net Zero Coalition at the UN aiming to reduce emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, we anticipate continuing to evolve to help the industry meet these ambitious targets. The rate at which our solutions have developed in the past five years alone has been rapid, so we hope that in 10 years’ time, technology will be even more efficient and CHOOOSE will be able to deliver our cutting-edge solutions across several industries.
Innovation and a global perspective are key to mitigating the impact of climate change, and CHOOOSE strives to embody these values in our development.
Do you think that achieving net zero is possible?
Yes, it is possible. It requires, however, that targets are met with the decisive action to achieve them. Through technology and forward-looking climate solutions such as carbon offsetting and SAF, companies can be proactive in both minimising future emissions and facilitating carbon removal.
Partnerships are also crucial to the future of net zero for corporations. As noted in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 17, revitalising global partnerships and prioritising omni-sector and international collaboration is key to galvanising sustainable development across the globe.
