NEW YORK—Wayaj announced the launch of Alight, a sustainable booking platform that allows travelers to book their hotel while calculating and offsetting their trip’s carbon footprint. Alight delivers the resources, tools, and expertise to allow travelers to make more informed choices to travel sustainably. Using a Carbon Footprint Calculating Engine (CFC Engine) and proprietary Hotel Sustainability Ratings (HSR) tool, Alight aims to support travelers on their sustainability journey.
Before COVID-19, 2019 saw record amounts of carbon emissions in the air from passenger flights. Meanwhile, experts predict that demand for international travel coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic will exceed years prior. Alight now makes it easier for leisure and business travelers to seamlessly book from a collection of 88+ sustainably-minded hotels across 50+ countries, calculate their trip’s carbon emissions, and offset against verified Carbon Offset Projects (COPs) available around the world.
Nelly Gedeon, serial entrepreneur and Founder of Alight shares, “The world is on the front line of vulnerability due to climate change. This past year, as travel has resumed the focus on sustainable travel has taken a backseat to the pandemic but as travel returns Alight can get conscious minded travelers back out there using our proprietary Carbon Footprint Calculating Engine (CFC EngineTM) to offset their travel and protect the planet.”
At launch, travelers will have eight international Carbon Offset Projects (COP’s) to choose from, which were obtained through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Such projects include the reforestation of degraded land and the development of renewable wind power.
More than a hotel booking platform, Alight aims to be the go-to vehicle for positive impact travel, helping globetrotters make more conscious and sustainable choices from reducing carbon emissions to supporting environmentally-friendly accommodations. The platform’s collection of properties are rated and vetted using its proprietary Hotel Sustainability Ratings (HSR) system which scores them across seven categories, which include community relationships, use of water, energy and waste, building materials and resources, as well as quality of the indoor environment, and corporate management.
Logan Cohen, Alight Sustainability Director shares, “The U.S. books over 1 billion hotel rooms each year alone. Based on our data of an average night stay of about 0.0236 tons of carbon emissions, this totals about 23.5 million tons of carbon from hotels in the US alone. Offsetting just 1% of these emissions through Alight would be nearly equal to turning all of New York City back into forest land.”
