In today’s world, a corporation’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance is imperative to doing business. Our parent company JetBlue Airways has dedicated ESG and diversity and inclusion teams focused on analyzing potential business impacts that arise from trends in the physical environment and society at-large. Our role as investors at JetBlue Technology Ventures (JTV) can also extend to support these ESG goals. With the onset of COVID-19 and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, we have seen a shift in where we focus both on enterprise and travel technology in this space.
In this blog, we’ll dig into what this means for travel providers, our own firm, and why it matters. We’ve seen this year’s events impact ESG in the following ways:
Environmental: “Flight-shame”, or the inherent guilt that an individual feels as a result of one’s aviation-related carbon footprint, first gained popularity in Europe in 2017. As a result, the airline industry has been keenly focused on resolving the environmental aspect of its business impact. To support these goals, we’ve placed a greater emphasis on startups that offer sustainable and efficient fueling options (Joby Aviation, i6), energy efficiency and offsetting, and climate change data tools. These technologies continue to remain key to solving climate change, a topic that remains critical even during the present pandemic. Due to COVID-19, we’ve also seen an increased interest in new forms of sustainable travel, such as virtual travel, which allows customers to support local communities in a manner that nearly eliminates a carbon footprint.
Social: A renewed focus on racial justice this year has encouraged travel providers to review their own diversity metrics: startups that reduce bias in hiring or training can better support these goals. In regards to the pandemic, the travel experience has been more challenging than ever. Technology has the potential to establish peer-to-peer recognition programs that encourage customers to engage in random acts of kindness during their journey. COVID-19 also highlighted the financial challenges that many Americans have faced, thereby creating interest in new fintech products that companies (including travel providers) can provide their employees.
Governance: Governance serves to bridge the environmental and social impacts so that companies may gather data, review metrics, set goals, and track success. However, identifying tools that can gather and analyze quality data has traditionally posed a challenge, with current events further underscoring that fact. Tools that allow for automatic measuring (such as emissions or diversity metrics) could enable an “ESG command center” to allow leaders to identify and address areas of opportunity more quickly.
There are many companies across the ecosystem that can partner with corporations to further ESG initiatives. Below is a non-exhaustive list of startups in this space that can benefit travel providers:
2020 has most strongly impacted the environmental and social sectors, with COVID-19 affecting the world on a global scale and the Black Lives Matter movement creating a ripple effect across the U.S. Even during this time of uncertainty, our focus on ESG remains a priority.
