TUI Green IT Awards: TUI honours the sustainability commitment of its IT partners - Get updated on what's happening in tourism!

TUI CEO Sebastian Ebel: “With the TUI Green IT Award, we honour partners who share our holistic approach for sustainability and act accordingly.”

The winners of the first TUI Green IT Award have been announced. With the award, the tourism group honours the sustainability commitment of its more than 2000 IT partners and suppliers. Technology from Amazon for the net zero transformation of a sports arena, a smart recycling process for workwear at Deutsche Telekom and support for underrepresented groups in the IT industry by QA Ltd. were selected by the jury chaired by TUI Group CEO Sebastian Ebel. Technology is an integral part of TUI's recently published Sustainability Agenda. For example, relocating server capacities to the cloud – as TUI has successfully done in recent years – can save up to 88 per cent in energy and CO2 emissions. In addition to these approaches for more sustainability in IT, the focus is on technologies that support or enable the implementation of the sustainability strategy.

"Technology will make a decisive contribution to the successful achievement of the sustainable transformation. Energy savings by moving data centers to the cloud, planning travel routes with the lowest possible emissions thanks to artificial intelligence – these are examples of how TUI is using technological solutions for more sustainability today. With the TUI Green IT Award, we honour partners who share our holistic approach to sustainability and act accordingly. The projects submitted for the award show creative solutions with which our partners assume societal responsibility," says Sebastian Ebel, CEO of TUI Group.

The winners prevailed in a multi-stage selection process. The final decision was up to the jury. Along with CEO Sebastian Ebel, the jury also included TUI's Chief Sustainability Officer Thomas Ellerbeck, Group Procurement Director Paul Walker and members of the global IT Leadership Board led by Group CIO Pieter Jordaan.

OVERVIEW OF THE WINNING INITIATIVES

Climate Pledge Arena – sponsored and modernized by Amazon – aims to become the first independently certified net-zero arena. It uses Amazon Web Services AWS dashboards to measure all sustainability impacts. TUI also wants to achieve net zero emissions for the entire company and its supply chains as quickly as possible. Targets have been defined and timetables developed, which have been reviewed and confirmed by SBTI. By 2030, the emissions of its own hotels are already to be reduced to zero, for which the Climate Pledge Arena provides valuable insights. "The initiative shows how a holistic approach can work. Individual measures range from paperless tickets and access to public transportation to waste management, and old parts of the building are recycled. Already, AWS is one of our key cloud partners. The sustainability dashboards used offer an exciting approach for deepening our partnership," says Isabelle Droll, member of the IT Leadership Board responsible for IT sustainability and initiator of the TUI Green IT Award.

Deutsche Telekom is taking a smart approach to recycling its employees' workwear. For this, the company is using its partner network and its own digital tools. Textile collection bins with IoT sensors enable automatic monitoring of fill levels, avoid unnecessary monitoring trips and allow needs-based disposal management from partner Remondis. The intelligent recycling processes help to reduce material consumption and CO2 emissions in the manufacturing of textiles. In addition, together with partner Boer Group, the processes allow the production of new textiles from old workwear. These positive effects on the environment also convinced the jury. "The initiative shows how the path to a circular economy can succeed – we will be looking at how our teams in hotels, airlines, cruises and travel agencies could benefit from such a smart process. Over the coming months we will be launching a green buying policy to show how we can utilize such principles, smartly reduce emissions and significantly decrease energy and water use" says Paul Walker, co-initiator of the award and jury member.

Teach the Nation to Code (TTNTC) by QA (UK) is a non-profit initiative that offers free IT beginner workshops for people of all ages and backgrounds. TTNTC focuses in particular on discovering hidden talent in underrepresented groups and people who do not have the opportunity for traditional training to help them realise their potential for a career in tech. TTNTC focuses in particular on discovering hidden talents in underrepresented groups in IT and on people who do not have the opportunity for traditional education. The judges were impressed by the individualized approach and the focus on underrepresented groups. "Diversity starts with the design of access to education and training. Initiatives like TTNTC are therefore of particular value because they often reach those who are less visible in the school system," says jury member Cerstin Lang, HR Director IT at TUI Group.

In addition to the three winners, two companies received a special mention by the jury for their commitment to sustainability:

Sonata Software (India) promotes local tourism at heritage sites and monuments by providing resources to develop digital tours and platforms.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (USA), together with Facebook and Microsoft, is making hundreds of patents available royalty-free as part of the Low-Carbon Patent Pledge to accelerate the adoption of low-carbon technologies.

Image Credit: © TUI Group