Leading search engine company Google this week announced the integration of brand new tools and features to make it easier for consumers to find sustainable travel options.

“To make this possible, we have put together a new team of engineers, designers and researchers that will focus solely on the sustainability of travel,” wrote Richard Holden, Google’s vice president of Travel Products, in the Google blog. “This team is already working on showing sustainable options in our travel tools that people use every day.”

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Starting this week, users will be able to search for information on sustainability efforts by hotels and resorts. In addition to the lists of hospitality providers who demonstrably meet the high sustainability standards of certain independent organizations such as Green Key or EarthCheck, an “eco-certified badge” will now appear.

For details on a hotel’s sustainability efforts – reducing its carbon footprint, reducing waste, increasing energy efficiency, saving water, using sustainable materials, etc. – users simply click the About tab.

Holden said Google is working with hotel chains like Hilton and Accor, as well as independent hotels around the world, to gather accurate information about their green practices and make it easily available to the public. Owners with eco certifications or green programs that travelers want to be informed about can add the new green attributes to their business profile through their Google My Business account.

And Google doesn’t just focus on the hotel sector, Travel + free time reported. There are also plans to provide users searching for air travel with an estimate of the CO2 emissions for each flight option. To this end, the company is just global Travalyst Coalition to which the founding partners Booking.com, Tripadvisor, Trip.com Group, Skyscanner and Visa belong.

The Travalyst initiative was launched in 2019 by the Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry, in response to public criticism of his and Meghan Markle’s use of private planes. Working with the coalition, Google will “help develop a standardized method for calculating CO2 emissions from air travel,” said Holden. “This free, open impact model will provide an industry framework to estimate emissions for a particular flight and share this information with potential travelers.”

“All of these updates are part of our commitment over the next decade to investing in technology that will help our partners and people around the world make sustainable choices,” said Holden.