Flight-free specialist Byway adds ‘carbon labelling’ feature

Flight-free travel company Byway has started showing the carbon footprint of each itinerary.

The new ‘carbon labelling’ feature states the total emissions output of all transport and accommodation, as well as a comparison with flight-based trips over a similar distance.

Byway founder and chief executive Cat Jones said she hopes the feature will “inspire more people to swap flight-based holidays for joyful multi-stop overland journeys”.

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A recent survey by Byway and OnePoll suggested that 42% of UK holidaymakers are looking to find alternatives to flying so they can reduce their carbon footprint, with the figure rising to 65% for Londoners and 61% for Gen Z travellers.

Jones, who founded Byway in 2020, said: “We’ve launched carbon labelling to allow our customers to weigh carbon costs as readily as monetary ones when choosing holidays.

“Our at-a-glance flight-comparison feature shows the scale of the carbon savings made by choosing flight-free for specific trips (-82% for a Scottish weekend; -80% for one week in Spain; -82% for two weeks in Croatia) and we hope it will inspire more people to swap flight-based holidays for joyful multi-stop overland journeys.”

Byway said its carbon calculations are “not 100% accurate”, with the methodology making “some assumptions”, but attempts are being made to improve the feature.