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Buyers consider green policy.

Article Excerpt
Some travel buyers at U.S.-based companies are investigating the environmental impact of their corporations' travel and assessing the eco-friendliness of their suppliers' operations, in the anticipation that environmental concerns will become a more prominent theme in travel management and overall corporate operations.

So far, U.S. travel managers' interest, rather than senior management directive, is driving the trend. This is a different direction than what has occurred in Europe (BTN, Dec. 5, 2005), where environmental concerns have been climbing buyers' agendas for more than a year (BTN, May 16, 2005). In Europe, the impulse is top-down, with travel managers taking their lead from executive boards that are making sustainability a strategic commitment.

There are exceptions to this general picture, including U.S.-based business travel buyers who take their lead from global headquarters in Europe, such as Credit Suisse Group. Another is a handful of U.S.-based companies that have addressed environmental considerations for many years. These include Hewlett-Packard, which attempts to reduce travel by offering workers the option of working from home and through teleconferencing. It also has assessed suppliers' environmental credentials for more than a decade. Figuring out how to make such assessments is one of the biggest challenges U.S. travel buyers are...

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