Carbon calculator big news in Netherlands

Dutch and Belgian newspapers think managing tourism carbon emissions is important

See video: HERE 

Recent winner for Innovation in the Tourism for Tomorrow Award, was the Dutch travel association ANVR for its Carmacal carbon calculator developed by Breda University of Applied Sciences.

The roll-out of this application was big news in the Netherlands media last week both in newspapers and on TV.

Said the WTTC in their award statement "Until now, a significant problem with most carbon calculators was that they focussed on only a limited part of the tourism package – typically either aviation or accommodation. However, thanks to Carmacal, the first B2B carbon calculator for tourism enterprises, it is now possible to measure all aspects of a holiday with one tool."

Carmacal is the only carbon calculator to be able to provide climate footprints at the level of airline/aircraft combinations per route, while also estimating the carbon footprint for 500,000 accommodation options around the world. It means that tour operators can now assess the carbon impact of the packages they offer more thoroughly than ever before, and look for ways to make them more efficient. Something that will add value to thousands of businesses across the world.

Carmacal is an application which allows tour operators to measure the complete and detailed carbon footprint of their tour packages, enabling the integration of carbon management into their daily operations.

Say the developers: "For effective integration of CO2 in tour operator decision making, next to data on turn-over, profit, customers, etcetera, you need a detailed carbon calculator that enables you to combine CO2 data with volume and financial data."

"You want to be able to find the accommodations with the lowest emissions, the most efficient airline or flights (on all scheduled flights), to know the emissions for a wide range of transport modes including occupation rate, to assess carbon intensive tourism activities, and be able to find the distance between any two places on the globe easily."

"Current calculators fail these requirements, as they mostly do not offer more than one emission factor for accommodations, have only general emission factors for transport modes, and are frequently centered on one element of tourism: either air transport or accommodation."

With Carmacal, tour operators are now able to measure and manage every carbon footprint aspect of their products in detail.

The carbon footprint of flights is specified up to the level of airline and type of plane, for all scheduled flights available. Carmacal differentiates the footprint for 25 modes of transport, 21 emission-intensive activities, and gives exact distance calculations. Accommodation carbon footprints are calculated on an individual basis for some 550,000 accommodations worldwide. For other accommodations, 20 different types with individual emission factors are available.

Carmacal is a web-based application with a simple overview screen, enabling product selection by for instance unique codes, product names, countries and product types. The first, overview screen is used for origin-destination transport and, if applicable, for an accommodation that is used during the whole trip.

Valere Tjolle

@ValereTjolle [email protected]

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