Interesting move from http://www.lastminute.com/, a leading European online travel agency.
They are highlighting on their website a few actions they are taking for a greener tourism. That comprises of promoting the train between Paris and London, and some internal actions such as using a green taxi company and offseting all their “business travel” carbon emissions.
I found this quite remarkable so here is the full text of their website:
” At lastminute.com we wouldn’t claim to be the greenest company on the planet.However, we are striving to be as environmentally friendly as possible, while also giving our customers the information to make informed choices as to how they travel. A great illustration of this is lastminute.com’s relationship with Eurostar. lastminute.com bagged Eurostar’s ‘Top Online Sales Partner Award’ for phenomenal sales of the cross-Channel service from our dedicated Eurostar pages. Following this, lastminute.com has joined forces with Eurostar to highlight the environmental benefits of taking the train between London, Paris and Brussels. Other examples of lastminute.com’s range of green initiatives include: The double award-winning carbon offsetting scheme carbonwise Launched in November 2006, carbonwise gives flight-only customers the opportunity to offset the CO2 emissions from their flying.More than 15% of customers have chosen to offset the CO2 emissions of their flying, which equates to over 15,000 tonnes.All households in the UK would have to turn their lights off for more than two and a half hours to save as much CO2 emissions as lastminute.com’s customers have offset.Carbonwise’s success has seen it scoop the 2007 Agent Achievement Award’s Travel Innovation of the Year and e-retailing body IMRG’s Large Retailer Online Green Award. And at lastminute.com, we do our bit too… lastminute.com offsets the carbon emissions of all business air travel lastminute.com’s corporate taxi company is the environmentally-conscious Climatecars, which emits 60% less CO2 emissions than traditional black cabs We use a green (hydro) electricity tariff in our buildings and offset emissions from our gas usage”
On last minute you can book any type of hotel, flights – and even lofts in Paris