Online Travel Training has sharpened its commitment to educating the travel trade on sustainability by launching a new stand-alone course section.

Over the past month, companies including All Nippon Airways (ANA), Copenhagen and Iberostar have each added their sustainability courses to the platform as part of their dedication to greener initiatives.

ANA has launched its 'Decade of Action' campaign up to 2030 to achieve net zero emissions for aircraft operations by 2050. The course is will guide learners through its various sustainable goals. The companies join Intrepid, Vancouver and the Lufthansa Group who have all launched sustainability courses online since early 2022.

At the beginning of this year OTT itself gained carbon neutral status, reducing the amount of carbon it produces as a business and offsetting elements of the business where emissions cannot be reduced or avoided. Over the course of 2021-22 OTT will be offsetting a total of 19.89 tonnes of carbon emissions.

Bugs blast leftover food waste at Malaysia Airlines

OTT founder and managing director Julia Feuell said there were already companies demonstrating some great sustainability initiatives and wanted to ensure OTT was able to showcase this by offering partners the chance to include green-themed courses.

She explained: “At WTM last year we filmed Daniel Bainbridge, Regional Manager from Malaysia Airlines discussing how they have black soldier bugs to eat left over plane food. It was fascinating to hear and I was inspired to then offer free sustainability training courses for our partners when I attended the ABTA Convention in 2021.”

“It made me think that there are actually quite a few initiatives going on (such as bugs eating leftover plane food!) and the industry doesn’t realise this. If we can educate the trade about some of these initiatives, they can tell their customers.

“Sustainability and environmental worries can be all consuming when you feel nothing is happening. OTT is proud to let the industry show off just what they are doing and I hope this will inspire others too.”

See the latest Sustainability Courses on OTT here