Founded in 2019 by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, Travalyst is a not-for-profit global coalition of some of the biggest names in travel and technology: Amadeus, Booking.com, Expedia Group, Google, Mastercard, Sabre, Skyscanner, Travelport, Trip.com Group, Tripadvisor and Visa.
As an independent entity, we provide supportive and neutral governance to our coalition partners; empowering some of the biggest – and occasionally competing – travel and technology brands to work together to accelerate change. The goal is to bring credible, consistent sustainability information to the mainstream, helping people make more informed travel choices.
Our coalition works collaboratively to provide clear, credible and consistent sustainability information. We share this information on a global scale, ensuring that all the work we do is transparent, independently validated and, in time, open source – so anyone in the travel industry can use it.
People booking travel are presented with consistent, transparent, easy-to-understand sustainability information across the travel platforms they already know and trust. This enables them to make more informed travel choices.
Our Independent Advisory Group comprises world-leading experts on sustainability who provide independent and critical analysis of the work developed and delivered by the coalition. They are:
Dr. Anna Spenceley, FRGS (Chair)
Sustainable Tourism Consultant
Anna Spenceley FRGS has over 20 years of experience in sustainable tourism globally, focusing on biodiversity conservation, protected areas, value chains and local economic development, standards and certification. Anna has led the development of many landmark publications on sustainable tourism, including for the IUCN, UNEP, UNESCO, EU, CBD and Word Bank Group. Anna compiled the ‘Handbook for Sustainable Tourism Practitioners: The Essential Toolbox’ and is also co-author of the books ‘Private Sector Tourism in Conservation Areas in Africa’ and ‘The Responsible Tourist’. Anna is a member of several IUCN Commissions and Specialist Groups, and between 2010 and 2023 was chair of the IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) Tourism and Protected Areas Specialist Group (TAPAS Group). She is part of the UN World Tourism Organisation’s Panel of Experts, sits on the Board of Trustees of the Seychelles Island Foundation, and is a Contributing Expert to the Tourism Panel on Climate Change. Anna is a Senior Research Fellow with the University of Johannesburg, and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism and Tourism Planning and Development. Anna works as an independent consultant and through her company, Spenceley Tourism And Development (STAND Ltd).
Sarah Holloway (Vice Chair)
Independent Sustainability Advisor
Sarah is an independent advisor on sustainability strategy and purpose-driven leadership, working with organisations of all sectors and sizes to define their place in a sustainable world. She is also a B Leader, supporting businesses along their journey to B Corp certification.
Over the past two decades, Sarah has supported some of the world’s best-known businesses – including C&A, Danone, Ella’s Kitchen, Interface, L’Oréal and Unilever – to drive transformative change. Before becoming a consultant, she held sustainability roles at TUI, Unilever and Tesco, and was a director at sustainability agency Futerra and culture consultancy Kin&Co.
Sarah is the author of ‘Networks for Sustainability’, a guide for leaders on how to embed sustainability into their organisations, and a regular guest lecturer at Imperial College London. She sits on SES Water’s Environmental Scrutiny Panel and Provenance’s Integrity Council, supporting and challenging their work.
Dr. Susanne Becken
Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University
Susanne Becken is a Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University in Australia and the Principal Science Investment Advisor (Visitor) in the Department of Conservation, New Zealand, where she works at the science-policy interface. Her research focuses on the tourism-environment nexus with particular focus on resource use and climate change, and has been published in well over 100 papers and industry reports. Susanne is a member of the Air New Zealand Sustainability Advisory Panel and the New Zealand Tourism Data Leadership Group, and she is an elected Fellow of the International Academy of the Study of Tourism. In 2019, she was awarded the prestigious UNWTO Ulysses Award for her contribution to tourism knowledge. She is on multiple editorial boards, including the Journal of Sustainable Tourism and Tourism Management.
Professor Sara Dolnicar
Professor of Tourism at The University of Queensland
Sara Dolnicar develops and experimentally tests theory-informed practical measures that trigger pro-environmental tourist behaviour; her research is driven by curiosity and the desire to create meaningful change. Professor Dolnicar has published more than 300 papers and won more than 30 awards for her work, including a prestigious Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship and the Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) Distinguished Researcher Award. She has been named a Slovenian Ambassador of Science, the highest honour the Republic of Slovenia bestows on expatriate Slovenian researchers in recognition of global excellence, impact, and knowledge transfer. Professor Dolnicar is currently the Co-Editor in Chief of Annals of Tourism Research, one of the leading international scientific journals in the field of tourism.
Marten Dresen
Founder and CEO of the Good Hotel Group
Marten Dresen is the founder and CEO of Good Hotel, an innovative hotel brand and social business. Combining doing business with doing good, Good Hotel is a non-dividend enterprise. Internationally, Good Hotel supports education projects in poor areas of Central America. Locally, each hotel hosts a Good Training programme, helping long-term unemployed locals get into work. With one night’s stay helping to fund a week of education for a kid in need, Good Hotel invites its guests to #SleepGoodDoGood, offering people the opportunity to meaningfully give back whilst enjoying a great hospitality experience. Marten also founded, and currently sits on the Supervisory Board of, the NGO Niños de Guatemala, building schools and providing education for over 600 Guatemalan children.
Dr. Xavier Font
Professor of Sustainability Marketing at the University of Surrey
Xavier Font has over 25 years’ experience working in sustainable tourism in the research and academic world with emphasis on business environment and impacts, entrepreneurship in the tourism industry, sustainable tourism/operations management, sustainability marketing, CSR and sustainable supply chain management. Xavier has worked with numerous organisations to promote pro-sustainable behaviour and enhance ways to market and communicate sustainability including the UNWTO, European Commission, UNEP, UNWTO, UNCTAD, UNDP, and many tourist boards. In 2022, he acted as consultant for the European Commission DG Grow on the stakeholder consultation for the Tourism Transition Pathway. Earlier in his career, he wrote the feasibility study for the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC).
Professor Paul Peeters
Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Transport and Tourism at Breda University of Applied Sciences
Paul Peeters is a Distinguished Professor of Sustainable Transport and Tourism at Breda University of Applied Sciences, where until 2023 he supervised the Centre for Sustainability, Tourism and Transport. He specialises in the environmental and climatic impacts of tourism transport. Paul was educated as an aircraft engineer at the University for Applied Sciences, Haarlem, the Netherlands. He worked as an aircraft preliminary design engineer at the late Fokker Aircraft Factory in Amsterdam, and as a wind energy researcher at the Dutch Energy Research Agency (ECN). In 2017, he was awarded a PhD in climate change mitigation and tourism from the University of Delft. Paul has published many journal articles, conference papers, book chapters and reports on tourism transportation, climate change, ecological footprints, and eco-efficiency. Many are focused the role of air transport in increasing CO2 emissions from tourism, and the limitations of technology in reducing aviation emissions.
Jeremy Smith
Co-founder, Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency
Jeremy Smith is a writer and strategist for climate action in tourism. In 2020, he co-founded Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency, a global initiative calling on tourism destinations and businesses to work together on equitable, science-based climate action. In 2021, he was a co-author of the UNWTO-led Glasgow Declaration for Climate Action in Tourism, which launched at COP26 in Glasgow. He is now working on various climate action projects, including with the UNWTO to ensure the implementation of the declaration’s commitments over the next decade, and with the Travel Foundation to develop their Climate Action Programme for destinations. He is the author of the books ‘Transforming Travel: Realising the Potential of Sustainable Tourism’ and ‘Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World’.