The internet has fundamentally changed how we travel. Whether it's finding inspiration on Instagram, homes to stay in on Airbnb and Trivago, or booking flights via Skyscanner, the reign of the travel brochure is over.
A new feature from Ecosia, the eco-focused search engine which plants a tree every time you make a search online, wants to make your holiday planning a little more environmentally-friendly.
Called Ecosia Travel, the new feature launching today allows people to search and book a hotel for their next trip via the search engine, powered by HotelsCombined. For each hotel room booked via Ecosia Travel, the company will use 100 per cent of its profits to plant an average of 26 trees.
Since the platform launched in 2009, it has planted over 61 million trees in places including Indonesia and Madagascar and this new pledge will propel that figure forward.
One hotel room booked in exchange for 26 trees? That sounds like a pretty good deal for the environment.
Ecosia has been trialling the new feature in its native Germany and is rolling it out today across Europe, the US, New Zealand and Australia. Over the next few months, Ecosia Travel will be available around the world too.
Ecosia’s founder and CEO Christian Kroll explained the new feature, saying: “Travel is an essential part of our lives, but it comes with a carbon footprint. We want to give Ecosia users the opportunity to make an environmentally-friendly choice when planning their next trip. It’s time for the industry to step up and do better and we’re proud to be part of a movement towards a fairer and more sustainable form of travelling.”
To access the new Ecosia Travel feature, either search “hotel” through Ecosia or directly access it by clicking the “more” link on the search results page. Using this, travellers will be able to compare hotel deals by price, star rating, or guest rating to find the right place to stay.
As well as planting trees from the profits, Ecosia is hoping to promote more sustainable forms of travel on the platform such as eco-friendly hotels, and promoting ways for people to compare their carbon footprint across different transport options.
With mass tourism accounting for around eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, finding ways to travel more sustainably is high on the agenda in 2019 - and it looks like Ecosia Travel is another tool to draw on for an eco-conscious break.
