Updating your sustainability practices

The Travel Sustainable programme is how we’re making it easier for everyone to make more sustainable travel choices. As part of the programme, we offer educational resources and support to help you improve the sustainability of your business. To join the programme and work towards getting the Travel Sustainable badge added to your property page, you'll need to add or update your answers to sustainability practices in the extranet by indicating which ones you’ve implemented at your property. If your current impact is high enough, you'll receive an email letting you know your Travel Sustainable Level within 24 hours. You'll then be allocated a Travel Sustainable badge that will be shown to guests within 48 hours. You can find out more about the programme in this Solutions article, as well as in these FAQs.

What’s in this article:

Working towards a Travel Sustainable Level

The Travel Sustainable badge is a recognition of your sustainability efforts and helps travellers identify properties that have implemented sustainable practices more easily. To achieve levels, you need to indicate which sustainability practices you’ve implemented on your property by updating your sustainability practices in the extranet. We assess eligibility using a set of criteria that are adjusted to your local context to take into account things like structural constraints and available technology.

The badge recognises properties as being at one of three different levels, or at a dedicated level for those with eligible third-party certification. To find out more about these levels, take a look at our Travel Sustainable Handbook.

In addition to the Travel Sustainable badge, we also display some third-party accreditations on your property page. Click here to learn more about getting certified.

Programme conditions and verification

The success of the Travel Sustainable programme depends on the accuracy of the information we receive from partners like you. We work with a third-party auditor to check that the information you provide about your property and sustainability practices is true and accurate. If discrepancies are found, we’ll remove the practice from your property page until we receive evidence of it having been implemented. This could impact your level status.

After a guest stays with you, we’ll also ask them to complete a survey about the accuracy of the information on your property page about your facilities, services and sustainability practices. In the survey, we’ll only ask guests about the sustainability practices you’ve told us you’ve adopted and which are visible on your property page.

By joining the Travel Sustainable programme, you agree:

• To provide us with accurate information about your property and sustainability practices
• To allow us to have your sustainability practices audited
• That you understand your responsibilities with regard to verification
• That you understand the types of verification methodologies
• That you understand that the Travel Sustainable programme is in its pilot phase

To find out more about the programme conditions, take a look at our Travel Sustainable Handbook. You can also find frequently asked questions about the programme in this article.

Updating your sustainability practices in the extranet

Here’s how to update your sustainability practices in the extranet:

1. Log in to the extranet
2. Click on Property and then click on Sustainability practices
3. In the Sustainability practices section, answer 'Yes' or 'No' to each practice question
4. Click on Save to finish

You can always update your answer later.

Only the sustainability practices you have in place are visible on your property page. We won’t display the practices you don’t have in place, but indicating which these are can help us understand what resources and support we need to provide in the future.

Updating your sustainability practices via your Connectivity provider

If you work with a Connectivity provider, you may be able to add sustainability practices to your property page via their platform. Please reach out to your provider to ask them about how they display your sustainability practices on our platform.  Please note that your Travel Sustainable Level will only be visible on the Extranet. 

Sustainability practices that aren’t listed in the extranet

If you’ve implemented additional practices that we don’t currently list in the extranet, you can let us know by following these steps:

1. Log in to the extranet
2. Click on Property and then select Sustainability practices
3. Click on Share your feedback
4. Fill in the form and click Submit

You won’t receive a response to submissions via this form, but we’ll use your feedback when we update future sustainability practices available in the extranet.

Adding your chain’s sustainability programme

We work directly with our Chains team to collect and display information from eligible sustainability programmes. For a chain programme to be eligible, it must be compulsory for all properties shown under the chain code in our systems. All properties also need to use the same brand name.

Ultimately, Travalyst’s independent advisory group reviews all hotel programmes to decide which ones are eligible and Booking.com will show these on that basis. .

If you’d like your chain’s sustainability programme to be displayed on our platform, please reach out to your Booking.com account manager or leave us your feedback here.