Business travel (e.g. flights, rail journeys, car hire, and hotel nights) can contribute significantly to your business's carbon footprint. The good news is that reducing emissions related to travel often saves money too, and the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that many organisations could cut business travel significantly without seeing a loss in productivity or client relations.

This guide gives you practical steps to reduce emissions from business travel. It covers reducing the amount you travel and switching to lower-carbon alternatives when travel is necessary.

How this helps your business

Reduces costs: Flights, hotels and car hire are expensive. Replacing even a few trips per year with video calls or land-based public transport can produce meaningful savings on travel budgets.
Cuts emissions quickly: Business travel is one of the few areas where SMEs can achieve large, fast reductions with no capital investment.
Improves your sustainability story: Customers and employees increasingly expect businesses to take their carbon footprint seriously. A clear travel policy demonstrates practical action rather than just good intentions.
Supports employee wellbeing: Reducing unnecessary trips frees up employee time and reduces the fatigue that comes with frequent travel.

Is this right for you?

Emissions from travel are relevant to almost all businesses, but will have a greater impact if you:

Have employees who travel regularly for meetings, conferences, or to client sites.
Rely on flights for UK domestic routes (e.g. London to Edinburgh) or short-haul European trips, where rail is a realistic alternative.
Do not have a sustainable travel policy or have not updated your travel policy with sustainability in mind

Note: Business travel does not include how your employees commute – i.e. how staff get to their normal place of work.

How to reduce your emissions from business travel

✅Understand your current travel picture

Get a clear picture of how your employees are travelling for business purposes. The numbers don’t have be perfect, but consider:

How many trips did your team take last year?
What modes of transport were used (e.g. flights, rental car, employee-owned cars, rail, bus, ferry, other)
How many nights have been spent in hotels?
Which trips were genuinely essential, and which could have been a call?
What was the rough split between domestic UK travel, European travel, and long-haul flights?

You can gather this from your finance system, expense claims, or a quick survey of staff. Even a rough picture is enough to identify where the biggest opportunities lie.

✅Set a simple travel policy

An effective company travel policy just needs to answer a few key questions clearly. A good starting point is to introduce a ‘virtual-first’ rule, where video calls are the default and in-person travel needs a reason. Consider also:

Train before plane: For any UK domestic journey or European destination reachable in under five hours by rail, make train travel the default. A London to Edinburgh flight produces around six times more greenhouse gas emissions per passenger than the equivalent train journey.
Economy over business or first class: Where flights are unavoidable, flying economy significantly reduces your per-person footprint. Business class is typically two to three times more carbon-intensive than economy because it takes up more of the plane's space.
Limit stopovers: Direct flights produce fewer emissions than routes with connections. When booking, choose non-stop options where possible.
Use EVs for car trips: For essential car journeys, use a small electric vehicle. Most major car hire companies (like Enterprise and Hertz) now offer EVs, and the charging locations are widespread in the UK.

✅Prioritise virtual meetings

Introduce good-quality, easy-to-use video conferencing as the standard way your team connects internally and with clients. This is the single most impactful change most businesses can make.

Practical tips:

Book video calls as the default for regular check-ins, reviews, and briefings - even with clients.
Reserve in-person meetings for relationship building, complex negotiations, or only where physical presence adds real value.
Ensure all staff have a quiet space to take calls, working tech and a good headset.

✅Promote comfortable rail travel

Train travel is often avoided because it feels less convenient than flying, but with a few adjustments, it can become a practical default for many trips. Some suggestions:

Purchase flexible advance rail tickets using a tool like Trainline for Business or LNER, which allow easy booking and changes/cancellations.
Remind staff they can work on trains - with a laptop and good 4G/5G or onboard WiFi, a three-hour train journey can be a highly productive.
Offer compensation time to staff who choose rail over flights for any journey longer than 5-6 hours on a train and allow flexible or first-class rail tickets on longer journeys so they can work whilst travelling.

✅Choose lower-carbon accommodation

When overnight stays are necessary, the choice of hotel makes a difference. Hotels vary widely in their carbon footprint depending on size, age, and management. Look for:

Hotels with credible environmental certifications such as Green Key, EarthCheck, or ISO 14001.
Choose properties close to your meeting venue, to reduce the need for taxis or car hire on the day.

In some cases, employees may be able to stay with friends whilst travelling, for which they could be compensated as an incentive to reduce emissions from hotel nights and save money on hotels.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

❌ Not using video calls: Many businesses assume that in-person meetings are always preferable. In practice, a well-run video call with a clear agenda is often more efficient than a trip that eats up a full day. The key is to invest in good technology and good meeting habits.

❌ Thinking domestic flights are faster: UK domestic air routes are among the most carbon-intensive journeys your team could make relative to the distance covered. London to Manchester, Edinburgh, or Bristol by train is often faster door-to-door than flying when you factor in airport time, and it produces a fraction of the emissions.

❌ Waiting for perfect data before acting: You don't need a full travel audit before you can start reducing emissions. A simple virtual-first policy and a preference for trains over planes will reduce your footprint immediately.

❌ Overlooking car travel: Regular car-based travel adds up quickly for businesses with field-based staff or frequent client visits. Switching to EVs for these journeys or consolidating trips can deliver significant impact.

Cost and Effort

Cost: Low to moderate

Most actions involve minimal spend. Main cost is staff time. Virtual meeting tools may need a one-off setup cost if not already in place. If you are flexible on when you can travel, then going by rail can cost a similar amount to flying.

Effort: Low to medium

Initial setup: 2–4 hours to review travel data, update your policy, and brief staff.
Ongoing: less than 1 hour per month once a travel policy is in place.

Conclusion

Engaging your suppliers doesn’t need to be complicated or time‑consuming. Starting small, keeping the conversation simple, and focusing on suppliers who are ready to engage will get you further than trying to develop a full supply‑chain strategy from day one. Every conversation you open helps build awareness, strengthen relationships, and create future opportunities to cut emissions together.