Start-up travel management company COCO+, which wraps up the cost of offsetting business travel in its transaction fees, has begun onboarding customers.
The UK-based company launched a fuel card that incorporates carbon offsetting a year ago and is now launching its business travel platform.
CEO and co-founder Neil Fincham-Dukes said the company offsets all emissions associated with a booking through gold-standard ClimateCare projects worldwide and is aiming to establish a foundation to operate sustainability projects in the UK.
“We felt if we can run a digital first, technology-led business and strip out some of the overheads, that we’d be able to provide a platform whereby we can actually pay for the offsets out of the commissions we earn in the back end so the customer doesn’t have to worry about it [offsetting] at all,” Fincham-Dukes told BTN Europe, adding that COCO+ transaction fees are “no more expensive” than its competitors.
“We’re using commissions to do good things for the environment. We know offsetting is not the answer to everything but it is something positive we can do now and we want to empower customers to take control. We’re not making a profit on the offsets and we’re very transparent on our methodologies,” he added.
Its transaction fees vary according to the method of transport booked in order to incorporate the necessary level of carbon offset, a feature which helps “incentivise users to do the right thing”.
The company’s full-service booking platform is powered by Vibe who carried out some bespoke work for COCO+ to prioritise the most environmentally friendly options in search results and to put carbon emissions information “front and centre”, said Fincham-Dukes.
It has partnered with ProTAS for its mid-office requirements and with Travelogix for back-end reporting. Tickets are issued through consolidators but “we want to evolve to a point where we're issuing tickets ourselves”.
The vast majority of customer bookings will be made online, explained Fincham-Dukes, but offline consultants are available to assist with more complex itineraries and the company offers outsourced out-of-hours assistance.
It is currently onboarding its first clients, around two-thirds of whom previously had unmanaged travel programmes. The remainder have moved across from other agency partners.
Fincham-Dukes said the company is initially targeting UK-based SMEs with largely domestic business travel programmes of around £150,000 to £500,000 in annual spend. It expects to manage £6 million in travel spend by the end of its first financial year but is talking to “a couple of multimillion [-pound] customers that could mean we smash that target”. As the company grows, Fincham-Dukes expects it to begin participating in more formal RFP processes.
Working alongside Fincham-Dukes is co-founder and COO Phil Brown, chief technology officer Gavin Heavyside, business development director Andy Follows, and travel operations director Aisha Battersby, formerly of Travel Counsellors for Business and Flight Centre Travel Group.