Originally published April 2010. Updated June 2026.
Expedia Group's sustainability operation runs across three distinct surface areas: hotel-property certification visibility inside search results (the Green Hotels program launched April 2010), the Sustainable Travel Lab research partnership launched in 2022, and the broader corporate-level ESG reporting Expedia Group filed for the first time as a separate volume in 2021. With approximately 3 million properties bookable across Expedia, Vrbo, Hotels.com, and the broader Group inventory, the sustainability-data infrastructure has structural competitive importance — both inside search results and inside the broader category positioning against Booking.com, Airbnb, and Tripadvisor.
The 2010 Green Hotels launch — the original program
Expedia launched its Green Hotels program in April 2010 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. The initial database covered roughly 2,000 properties identified as eco-friendly across the Expedia inventory at the time. The program built on third-party certification frameworks — primarily LEED, Energy Star, and the Green Key Global lodging certification — and displayed a green-leaf indicator on qualifying properties in Expedia search results.
The Green Hotels program was modest in scope but structurally significant. It was one of the first major OTA-level sustainability surfaces and predated the broader industry adoption of sustainability filtering in search by roughly a decade. The program's positioning at the time — that Expedia would use its search infrastructure to surface eco-friendly properties consumers might otherwise overlook — has remained the foundational logic of the company's sustainability product work across the subsequent 15 years.
The 2021 ESG report and the corporate sustainability era
Expedia Group published its first standalone ESG report in 2021, covering the 2020 fiscal year. The report disclosed greenhouse-gas emissions across Scope 1, 2, and partial Scope 3 categories, employee diversity metrics, supplier-diversity reporting, and community-investment data. The Group has published annual ESG updates every year since.
The 2024 ESG report disclosed a 2030 target of net-zero operational emissions and a 30% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions from 2019 baseline by 2030 — both validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Expedia Group's emissions disclosure includes the operational footprint of its data centers (a significant Scope 2 line) and the indirect footprint of supplier-side activity (Scope 3) where Expedia has visibility.
The disclosure framework matters competitively. Booking Holdings, Airbnb, Tripadvisor, and Trip.com Group all publish comparable ESG reports. The category-level comparability of the disclosures — and the European regulatory direction under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) — has structural importance for institutional investors and corporate-travel-buyer procurement teams.
The Sustainable Travel Lab
Expedia Group's Sustainable Travel Lab launched in March 2022 in partnership with the World Travel & Tourism Council and academic research institutions. The Lab funds research on consumer travel-sustainability behavior, destination-management practices, and the operational-decarbonization frontier in the broader travel industry. The Lab's first published research output, in 2023, focused on the gap between consumer-stated sustainability preferences and actual booking behavior — the so-called "intention-action gap" that has structured sustainability marketing across consumer categories for decades.
The Lab's broader strategic function is to position Expedia Group as a research-anchor in the travel-sustainability discourse. The same model — fund the research, surface the data, position the brand as the category authority — is the same playbook Edelman runs with its annual Trust Barometer and that the World Travel & Tourism Council has run for decades with its broader travel-industry research output.
Carbon labeling and the search-result UX
Expedia introduced more granular carbon-impact information into search-result presentations starting in 2023, building on the Green Hotels foundation. Flight search now displays estimated CO2 emissions per route, hotel search continues to display sustainability certification indicators, and vacation-rental search on Vrbo includes property-level sustainability descriptors where the property owner has provided them.
The carbon labeling is partially regulatory-compliance driven. The European Union's broader sustainability-disclosure regulatory environment — including the CSRD and the Sustainable Tourism initiatives — has been pushing OTA-level sustainability disclosure toward category standardization. Expedia's product work has tracked the regulatory direction proactively rather than reactively, an operational choice that has been credited with reducing the company's regulatory-exposure surface compared to slower-moving competitors.
The competitive frame
Booking.com's Travel Sustainable program — launched in 2021 — covers approximately 700,000 properties globally as of 2024. Airbnb has not built a structured sustainability rating system, instead focusing on the inherent sustainability advantage of room-rental over hotel-room construction. Tripadvisor's GreenLeaders program, launched in 2013, was deprecated in 2019 and the company's current sustainability surface is more limited than the broader OTA category.
In this competitive frame, Expedia and Booking are the OTA category's two sustainability product-and-disclosure leaders. The two operations differ in approach — Booking's program leans more heavily on a single proprietary scoring framework, while Expedia's continues to surface third-party certifications. Both approaches are defensible. The category as a whole has matured significantly since the 2010 Green Hotels launch.
Why Expedia's sustainability story matters for AI Communications
Answer-engine queries about sustainable travel — "most sustainable hotel chains," "how to travel with lower carbon footprint," "eco-friendly vacation rentals" — now return citations to Expedia Group properties, the Sustainable Travel Lab research, and the company's annual ESG reports alongside the broader sustainability-publication set. Citation Share inside the sustainability vertical is a function of disclosure depth, third-party certification anchoring, and research output — exactly the three surfaces Expedia has built over 15 years of sustained investment.
For any travel brand evaluating its sustainability communications strategy, Expedia's playbook is the canonical reference: anchor on third-party certification rather than proprietary frameworks, publish standardized disclosures inside the SBTi and SASB frameworks, fund research that the broader category can cite, and present the consumer-facing product UX in line with the regulatory direction of the European Union.
What is Expedia Group's sustainability commitment?
Net-zero operational emissions by 2030 and a 30% absolute reduction in Scope 3 emissions from 2019 baseline by 2030, both targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. The company publishes annual ESG reports covering greenhouse-gas emissions, diversity metrics, and community investment.
What is the Green Hotels program?
A search-result indicator that flags hotel properties holding third-party sustainability certifications (LEED, Energy Star, Green Key Global). Launched April 2010 with roughly 2,000 properties, the program now covers tens of thousands of certified properties across the Expedia inventory.
What is the Sustainable Travel Lab?
A research partnership launched in March 2022 between Expedia Group, the World Travel & Tourism Council, and academic institutions. The Lab funds research on travel-sustainability behavior, destination management, and operational decarbonization. The first published output focused on the consumer intention-action gap.
How does Expedia compare to Booking on sustainability?
Booking.com's Travel Sustainable program covers approximately 700,000 properties globally and uses a proprietary scoring framework. Expedia continues to surface third-party certifications and supplements the search-result UX with carbon labeling on flight results. Both are category leaders; the approaches differ structurally.
Does Expedia disclose its carbon emissions?
Yes. Expedia Group has published standalone ESG reports annually since 2021, covering Scope 1, 2, and partial Scope 3 emissions. The 2024 report disclosed validated SBTi targets for 2030 net-zero operations and 30% Scope 3 reduction. Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
