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How technology contributes to environmental sustainability in the travel industry

Yannick Beunardeau

Global Head of Sales and Marketing, Airport IT, Amadeus IT Group

My passions are travel and flying. I started to feed this passion by flying aircraft myself, and obtaining several pilot licenses. I’m also passionate about the environment. This leads to an internal conflict. On one hand, travel industry growth is good for business and the economy. And on the other, pollution needs to be reduced. How can we make these things compatible? We shouldn’t underestimate the possibilities that technology opens to help the fight against climate change.

plane taking off

 

 

What Amadeus is doing

Our solutions improve efficiency and in turn save fuel, contributing to reduce CO2 emissions by thousands of tonnes. It all starts with our philosophy of optimisation: to do more with less. This means helping more people travel with less CO2. Our technology is already improving environmental sustainability in the travel industry because we ensure it is the most optimised available. We are able to do this by investing in research and development. In 2016, Amadeus invested €726 million in R&D to push innovation.

What optimisation means

  • If the order in which the aircraft should depart from their parking stands is optimised, it will meanless taxi time for the aircraft

    so less fuel is burnt while airplanes queue at the runway before taking off.

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  • Cutting edge technology forecasts and analyses the passenger and cargo load more precisely, defining the most favourable load distribution on the aircraft. This means that airlines canoptimise the fuel they need for their flight plans .
  • The traditional airport infrastructure used for check-in and boarding passengers uses a vast amount of energy so cloud based solutions mean more environmentally friendly technology. Clients who use such cloud based solutions and lightweight computers, also known as thin clients, consume an average of 8-20 watts compared to 150 watts for traditional computers.

We are committed to sustainability in the travel industry – and it’s clear that technology is key to achieve this. We all need to make this change happen, so that our industry grows and becomes environmentally sustainable at the same time. I think this is possible if we all work together, wouldn’t you agree?

Learn more about our environmental sustainability efforts in theAmadeus Global Report here .