Advito’s Sustainable Collaboration Practice Lead, Julien Etchanchu.
Advito’s new environmental quality service index (eQSI) is the industry’s first fair market share calculation that takes aircraft efficiency into account, allowing travel managers to bring sustainability into their sourcing negotiations.
CHICAGO – Travel consultancy, Advito, announce the development of the industry’s first environmental quality service index (eQSI). The eQSI was developed in response to clients’ pressing needs to factor sustainability into their air supplier sourcing engagements. Advito originally developed their proprietary QSI to combat the carrier-centric fair market share (FMS) data typically provided by airlines. Now, the consultancy is taking it one step further and including aircraft environmental performance into the data to create an eQSI, challenging the industry to take sustainability seriously and highlighting the power of corporate buyers to accelerate the industry transition to reducing business travel emissions.
Advito’s Sustainable Collaboration Practice Lead, Julien Etchanchu, asserts that the new eQSI will help travel managers make objective decisions during their negotiations with airlines to support their overall sustainability strategy.
“We know that airlines tend to overestimate their own QSI,” said Etchanchu, “So we created a QSI to give our clients an unbiased look at market share during sourcing engagements. We also factored in business traveler behavior to meet corporate segment needs. Aircraft performance is an objective input; we know that newer aircraft emit less CO2 than older models. Using that data, now we’re able to concretely factor environmental impact into negotiations and use predictive analytics to calculate future scores as well.”
Advito is helping clients communicate to their travelers that when it’s time to book, they need to consider how their trip will impact the environment. Travel managers want to make the same considerations during the air RFP process, not only looking at the traditional factors of price and market share, but also considering how potential suppliers will support their emissions reduction goals. Julien said, “One of the four pillars of building a sustainable business travel program is to source sustainable suppliers. Our new eQSI, refreshed monthly, is the best tool in a travel manager’s arsenal to begin looking at sustainability while building their program, rather than waiting until contracts are in place to get started.”
Using a proprietary calculation, the new eQSI will award a higher market share to airlines using a newer generation fleet. “If carrier A and carrier B both operate one flight every day at the same time with the same number of seats between San Francisco and Shanghai, using traditional calculations, their QSI will be 50% each,” said Julien. “However, if carrier A flies a B767 and carrier B flies a new generation B787, then Advito’s eQSI would recalculate carrier A’s score to 40% and carrier B to 60% – a +10% premium for operating a more sustainable aircraft. Share shift scenarios powered by eQSI will disrupt how travel buyers negotiate carrier corporate contract goals.”
The eQSI is going to be a standard component of air sourcing and dynamic program management engagements going forward. Advito’s goal is to further contribute to the push toward sustainable business travel, and help their clients reduce emissions while creating engaging experiences for their travelers.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
