Heading into its sixth year, the World Travel & Tourism Council’s (WTTC) Tourism for Tomorrow Awards has selected the city of Beijing for its 2010 festivities.

The awards, aimed at recognizing best practices in sustainable tourism across the globe, focuses on the travel industry as concerns continue to grow over the cultivation and preservation of both cultural and natural resources. 

An independent panel of judges, including some of the world’s most authoritative experts of sustainable development, as well as a stringent application process involving on-site verification visits by these experts, has made the Tourism for Tomorrow Awards one of the most highly-coveted accolades in the industry.

Awards are based on four main categories, including:

• Destination Stewardship
  This award goes to a destination – country, region, state, or town – which comprises a network of tourism enterprises and organizations that show dedication to, and success in, maintaining a program of sustainable tourism management at the destination level, incorporating social, cultural, environmental, and economic aspects, as well as multi-stakeholder engagement.
• Conservation
  Open to any tourism business, organization, or attraction, including lodges, hotels, or tour operators, able to demonstrate that their tourism development and operations have made a tangible contribution to the conservation of natural heritage.
• Community Benefit
  This award is for a tourism initiative that has effectively demonstrated direct benefits to local people, including capacity building, the transfer of industry skills, and support for community development.
• Global Tourism Business
  Open to any large company from any sector of travel and tourism – cruise lines, hotel groups, airlines, tour operators, etc. – with at least 200 full-time employees and operating in more than one country or in more than one destination in a single country, this award recognizes best practices in sustainable tourism at a large company level.

The actual Tourism for Tomorrow Awards ceremony is slated to take place in May 2010, and is endorsed by WTTC members as well as other organizations and companies. They are organized in association with two Strategic Partners: Travelport and The Leading Travel Companies’ Conservation Foundation.

Other sponsors/supporters include: Adventures in Travel Expo, BEST Education Network, Breaking Travel News, the Daily Telegraph, eTurboNews, Friends of Nature, National Geographic Adventure and National Geographic Traveler, Planeterra, the Rainforest Alliance, Reed Travel Exhibitions, Sustainable Travel International, Tony Charters & Associates, Travelmole, Travesias, TTN Middle East, USA Today, and the World Heritage Alliance.

For more information, visit www.tourismfortomorrow.com.

Winners and finalists will be honored at a special recognition ceremony at the WTTC 2009 Global Travel & Tourism Summit. Travelport CEO and President, Jeff Clarke will be in attendance to honor and address the winners and finalists in the award categories, which include Destination Stewardship, Conservation, Community Benefit, and the Global Tourism Business Award focusing exclusively on sustainable tourism at the larger corporate level to further demonstrate that best practices can encompass businesses of any scale.

“Travelport is committed to engendering and promoting sustainable travel,” said Jeff Clarke, Travelport CEO and President. “We foster a culture of responsible and environmentally-conscious practices, develop tools for offsetting and measuring carbon emissions and continue to participate in organizations and initiatives that implement these services and impart this universal message. I am honored to play a role in recognizing the recipients and finalists of the Tourism for Tomorrow Awards and to underscore the impactful contributions of these role models as well as the WTTC.”

“We are delighted that our strategic partner, Travelport, will once again co-sponsor this very important awards event,” added Jean-Claude Baumgarten, President, WTTC. “As an organization dedicated to environmental awareness and facilitating mass travel globally, it leads by example and contributes to the shared vision of sustainability in Travel and Tourism.”

An independent panel of judges, including some of the world’s most authoritative experts of sustainable development and a stringent application process involving on-site verification visits by these experts, has earned the Tourism for Tomorrow Awards growing levels of respect among the travel industry, governments and the international media.

About Travelport
Travelport is one of the world’s largest travel conglomerates offering broad based business services to companies operating in the global travel industry. The company is comprised of Travelport GDS, a global distribution system business that includes the Worldspan and Galileo brands; GTA, a group travel and wholesale hotel business; Business Intelligence by Travelport, a data analysis business; and IT Services and Software, which hosts mission critical applications and provides business solutions for major airlines.

Travelport also owns approximately 48% of Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW), a leading global online travel company. With 2007 revenues of $2.6 billion, Travelport operates in 145 countries and has approximately 5,500 employees.

Travelport is a private company owned by The Blackstone Group, One Equity Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures and Travelport management.

About the WTTC
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) is the forum for business leaders in the Travel & Tourism industry. With Chief Executives of some one hundred of the world’s leading Travel & Tourism companies as its Members, WTTC has a unique mandate and overview on all matters related to Travel & Tourism.

WTTC works to raise awareness of Travel & Tourism as one of the world’s largest industries, employing approximately 238 million people and generating nearly 10% of world GDP.

• Baojian Zhang, Regional Vice President, North Asia of IATA
• Min Fan, CEO of Ctrip
• Guangfu Cui, CEO of Elong
• Weixiang Feng, CEO of Mangocity
• Scott Blume, CEO of Zuji
• Cyrill Ranque, VP, Partner Service Group, Asia Pacific of Expedia
• Martin Symes, CEO of Wego（Bezurk）
• Adrian Currie, Chairman of Agoda
• Fritz Demopoulos, CEO of Qunar
• Hua Chen, CEO of Kooxoo.com
• Hans Belle, VP of Marketing, Sabre, Asia Pacific,
• George Harb, Commercial Director of Travelport, Asia
• Larry Liang, Deputy GM of GDS Dept., Travelsky
• Markus Keller，Accor Greater China Sales&Distribution Director
• Tim Gao, President of Hainan Airlines Hotel Group
• Alex Xu, Chairman&CEO of GreenTree Inns Hotel Management Group
• Yuezhou Lin, CIO of 7 Days Inn
• Sara Janine Thorley, GM of British Airways, China
• Fajin Hu, Senior E-commerce Manager, Air China
• Sandeep Bahl, GM of China of Northwest Airlines, Inc.
• Ningjun Li, GM of IT Dept., China Air Spring
• Billy Shen, COO of Byecity.com
• Xiaoming Lie, CEO of Tianker.com
• Ji Sun, CEO of China Air Service
• Yang Lei, CEO of BilltoBill
• Tommy Tian, China Analyst of Phocuswright
• Janet Tang, CEO of Sinohotel Travel Network(Panel only)

The registration will start from July 2. For more information, please visit the event website at www.traveldaily.cn/tdchina/en/index_en.asp.

Travelport today announced the introduction of the Travelport Carbon Tracker, a new and advanced post-booking reporting tool designed for travel agencies and corporations to address the growing demand to measure and report carbon emissions as part of a sustainable travel program.

The Travelport Carbon Tracker takes advantage of the latest developments in emissions calculation.  It is one of the first corporate tools to combine industry-standard compliance reporting[1] with an advanced calculator that uses operational data and a range of key variables to deliver more sophisticated emissions analysis.

Developed in conjunction with Agresso and The Carbon Consultancy, the Travelport Carbon Tracker has been designed to provide robust intelligence to inform and enable sustainable travel decision-making.  In contrast to many existing carbon calculators, the Travelport Carbon Tracker is not directly linked to specific “offsetting” programs and is designed for use with multiple Global Distribution Systems (GDS).

Jeff Clarke, president and CEO of Travelport, said; “At the core of all ‘carbon mindful’ initiatives is the measurement of carbon emissions, yet carbon measurement itself is a relatively new and emerging science.  Research is still needed to improve on the accuracy of data gathering, calculation and reporting solutions.  As an active member of the travel industry, we are cognizant of the critical environmental issues we all face and are committed to finding the best possible solutions. 

“Our aims in launching this tool are to give the industry access to the latest and most improved ways of measuring emissions for business intelligence; to encourage debate and collaboration in terms of emissions benchmarking; and to enable corporations to make informed decisions for sustainable travel as part of their overall travel policies”. 

The Travelport Carbon Tracker utilises a graphical interface and task-orientated approach that enables users to rapidly calculate and compare accurate CO2 analyses for each itinerary and obtain information on carbon emissions across multiple travel types (air, rail and car).  It has built-in report-generation capabilities and can merge information from back-office systems.  The Travelport Carbon Tracker is also designed to provide neutral and unbiased carbon emission measurements across multiple GDSs.

The Travelport Carbon Tracker provides corporations with a more accurate measurement of emissions and is a vital step towards a better understanding of how to more effectively manage carbon footprints.  It reinforces Travelport’s active role in sustainable travel initiatives that address environmental issues on a global scale. Sustainable travel is essential not only to the health of the planet but to the health of the travel industry, which contributes to global economic development, cross cultural understanding, tolerance and respect.

Visit www.travelport.com/CarbonTracker to see a preview of the Carbon Tracker.

About Travelport
Travelport is one of the world’s largest travel conglomerates. The company operates three primary businesses – Travelport GDS, a global distribution system business; an IT Services and Software business; and GTA, a group travel and wholesale hotel business. Travelport GDS comprises the Galileo and Worldspan brands and includes Business Intelligence, a data analysis business. The IT Services and Software business hosts mission critical applications and provides business solutions for major airlines. Travelport also owns approximately 48% of Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW), a leading global online travel company. With on-going annual revenues of approximately $2.8 billion, Travelport operates in 145 countries and has approximately 6,000 employees. Travelport is a private company owned by The Blackstone Group, One Equity Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures and Travelport management.

About Agresso
Agresso (www.agresso.com) is a €156 million enterprise resource planning (ERP) and travel management solutions subsidiary of Netherlands-based Unit 4 Agresso (Dutch Stock Exchange EURONEXT-U4AGR).