What is needed for this?

• Calculation standards that are based on scientific facts and are widely used in the tourism industry;
• Emissions data from service providers (flight, train, bus, car, accommodation, cruise, excursions and activities in the holiday region);
• travel companies that display the calculated climate footprints in their sales channels and thus make them accessible to consumers
• and a one-stop platform that makes all emission data available to users at the moment of enquiry via the booking system.

This one-stop platform will be provided by KlimaLink in 2024, making the required emission data easily accessible to the tourism industry on the basis of a uniform calculation standard.

The desire for a uniform calculation of climate-damaging emissions has increased significantly in the industry and business travellers and holidaymakers are increasingly asking about the actual climate footprint caused by their trips. In addition, the EU CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) is becoming relevant for more and more companies and travel emissions are mandatory as part of reporting.

There are already various methods for calculating greenhouse gas emissions in tourism. However, these do not delimit the CO₂e emissions in a standardised way and determine the emissions using different approaches and accuracies. The aim of KlimaLink is to make CO₂e emissions available to all users in the industry on the basis of a uniform calculation standard (consisting of various methods).

To this end, the KlimaLink standards for individual travel components are developed in working groups consisting of experts from our member and the scientific community and are based on the following criteria:

• CO2e emissions are recorded systematically and with a high degree of accuracy.
• The CO₂e emissions of different service providers (flight, hotel, cruise, etc.) can be compared and categorised.
• The calculations are accurate enough to show travellers options for reducing climate emissions even before they book.
• The calculations are accurate enough to compare combined travel products of different types on the basis of absolute CO₂e emissions.
• The various methods are based entirely on travel input data that is available to the travel industry as standard in the systems of tour operators and travel agents.
• The standard provides a unique CO₂e value for each input of travel components worldwide. To this end, the individual methods specify fallback hierarchies that require less and less specific input data in descending tiers (method variants) in order to always deliver the best result under the circumstances.

There is already agreement on the calculation method for flights, rail, bus/car and hotels. These will be visible in booking systems as from spring 2025. Calculation standards for other components will follow shortly, until all travel components can be covered by the end of 2025.

• Flight (from autumn 2024)
• Rail (from winter 2024)
• Bus/car (from winter 2024)
• Hotel/accommodation (from autumn 2024)
• Cruise/ferry (in 2025)
• Activity and mobility on site (in 2025)

The emissions calculation for the Climate Link is based on specific emissions values that a travel service generated in the past. If no such specific values exist, the most accurate average values possible are used. The data is collected, verified and provided by our partner company, the climate protection organisation atmosfair.

In doing so, the Climate Link Standard takes into account, as far as possible, the destination and departure point, the expected occupancy rate, selected booking classes and model specifications for aircraft or other means of transport. Despite this claim of the most accurate calculation possible, the Climate Link Standard can only provide an approximation of the actual emission value, which may be subject to significant deviations in individual cases, and therefore serves only as a rough guide. The correct calculation of CO2 emissions is scientifically controversial and can lead to different results depending on the calculation method. In this sense, the Climate Link standard offers only one of many possible calculation methods. You can find more about the standard and the currently available calculation methods for flights and hotels here:

• Flight calculation standard
  
• Hotel calculation standard