What we heard at Climate Week NYC: collaboration, market activation, and the future of sustainable travel

“If you had $100 million to accelerate business travel decarbonization, where would you invest it?”

That question sparked one of the most engaging discussions at the GBTA Foundation’s Business Travel: Impact in Motion event, challenging participants to think beyond today’s constraints and focus on the actions that could drive the greatest impact by 2030.

It was an appropriate question for Climate Week NYC, where conversations across industries returned to a similar challenge: how do we move from ambition to implementation?

That focus reflected Climate Week NYC’s 2026 themes: the energy, impact and action we drive together, with an emphasis on removing barriers to implementation and delivering progress at speed and scale.

Throughout the week, the GBTA Foundation team participated in discussions spanning sustainable travel, climate finance, policy, and market development. While the events covered a wide range of sectors and perspectives, several common themes emerged, all of them highly relevant to the future of business travel. 

2026 Climate Week Photo Highlights

A marked shift from planning and pledges to impact and action 

Business Travel: Impact in Motion, co-hosted with IHG Hotels & Resorts, Delta Air Lines and Hertz, brought together 80+ sustainability and business travel leaders to explore the state of business travel decarbonization in 2026. Through live polling, case studies and candid discussion, participants examined some of the most pressing questions facing the sector today: Are organizations making meaningful progress? Is sustainability creating measurable business value? And how can business travel continue to support growth and connection while contributing to climate goals?

What stood out most was the honesty of the conversation. Participants spoke openly about what is working, where progress has been harder to achieve, and what lessons they are learning along the way. The discussion reflected a growing maturity across the industry. The focus is no longer simply on setting goals. Increasingly, the conversation is about implementation, measurable outcomes and business value.

Page Motes, Chief Compliance & Sustainability Officer at Hertz observed: “Every organization here is likely in the midst of a shift from ambition for ambition’s sake to meaningful business impact. Like many of you, we have to root our activities in driving efficiency, increasing revenue, advancing customer experience.”

Scaling solutions requires functioning markets

Top of mind for business travel leaders was Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), supply-and-demand challenges, and the market conditions necessary to attract investment and unlock scale. The conversations reinforced an important point: innovation alone is not enough. Progress depends on creating the conditions that allow promising solutions to grow into viable markets.

For business travel professionals, this has direct implications. Whether discussing SAF, new technologies or supplier decarbonization efforts, long-term progress will depend not only on technological advancement but also on market structures that support adoption at scale. Translating that shared ambition into practical collaboration is precisely why the GBTA Foundation launched SAF Corporate Connect, a dedicated forum designed to unite the business travel community around knowledge-sharing and collective action.

As Amelia DeLuca, Chief Sustainability Officer at Delta Air Lines noted at Business Travel: Impact in Motion, “We’re helping build the markets and technologies that aviation will need in the future. Whether through sustainable aviation fuel, next-generation aircraft, operational innovation, or partnerships across the value chain, we’re seeing encouraging momentum toward solutions that can scale over time.”

Collaboration remains the industry’s greatest opportunity

If there was one message that underpinned every discussion at Business Travel at Climate Week, it was the importance of collaboration.

Catherine Dolton, Chief Sustainability Officer, IHG Hotels & Resorts noted, “The question is… how do we make travel work better: more responsibly, more efficiently, and with a clearer understanding of its impact. Achieving that requires more than any one company acting alone. It requires buyers, suppliers, industry associations, hotel owners, airlines, mobility providers, platforms, and sustainability teams to share an understanding of what progress looks like and to be transparent about where the system still needs to evolve.”

Whether the topic was booking behavior, supplier engagement, policy development, data standardization or emissions reduction strategies, the most promising solutions were those built through partnership. Frameworks such as GBTA’s Padrões de Aquisições Sustentáveis can help support that collaboration by creating a shared language for sustainability and clearer expectations between buyers and suppliers.

The next phase of climate action will require organizations to work together in ways that would have seemed unusual only a few years ago.

Climate Week NYC made it clear that this change is already underway.

Travel is becoming a more influential voice in the climate conversation – and vice versa

Beyond Business Travel at Climate Week: Impact in Motion, the GBTA Foundation team participated in more than a dozen events over three days, engaging with leaders from across business, finance, technology, aviation, hospitality, and sustainability. What was striking was not only the growing recognition of travel’s role in achieving climate goals, but also the increasing influence of climate priorities on travel-related business decisions.

Across these conversations, common themes emerged: stronger collaboration across the travel ecosystem, clearer market signals, and a greater focus on business value, resilience, and practical implementation. Together, they reinforced a clear takeaway: travel is no longer sitting on the sidelines of the climate conversation. It is becoming an increasingly important voice in shaping it.

“Travel’s impact is vast, crossing sectors, politics, and borders… We have an extraordinary range of people and perspectives here with an opportunity to ensure travel… is part of the conversation about building a more resilient future.” — Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Founder of Travalyst, in conversation at the Skift Global Forum

O que vem depois?

Business Travel at Climate Week: Impact in Motion ended with a reminder captured by Delphine Millot, Managing Director, GBTA Foundation: the event is the energizing part; the hard work begins when participants return to the office. The next step is to turn the ideas, connections and commitments made in New York into decisions that influence travel programs over the coming year.

• Advance your SAF journey If sustainable aviation fuel is part of your organization’s decarbonization strategy, we encourage you to join our upcoming workshop, Getting to a ‘Yes’ on SAF: Building the Business Case for Sustainable Aviation Fuel on October 13. This interactive session will help participants understand how to make the business case for SAF, engage internal stakeholders, evaluate costs and benefits, and move from interest to implementation.
• Join us at the GBTA Sustainability Summit in Vienna: Continue the conversation at the Cúpula de Sustentabilidade GBTA on November 2 in Vienna, where we’ll focus on moving from strategy to scale. This focused, solution-driven gathering will bring together industry leaders, practitioners, experts and policy leaders to outline the latest trends in sustainable business travel and offer concrete decarbonization solutions
• Explore additional tools and resources Visita Fundação GBTA.org for the latest research, educational resources, standards, and other practical guidance to support your sustainability journey

Interested in joining the movement? 

Learn more about how your organization can get involved by following us on LinkedIn e signing up to our GBTA Foundation Newsletter. Reach out to Cady Wolf at cwolf@gbta.org if you are interested in partnership opportunities.