The necessity
Over 1% of all CO2 emission on our planet is caused by the hotel and meetings & events industry as well as the travel, services and deliveries that are linked to it (source). More specifically, research has shown that hotel and meeting & event guests indirectly generate between 30 – 50kg of CO2 for every 100 Euro, which they spend in hotels (source).
Fortunately, there is a growing number of hotels and meeting venues that offer their guests an easy and transparent way to compensate (a part of) their CO2 impact. This is a great development, since in a post-COVID-19 world there is an ever-increasing demand for this.
Our goal
We aim to make the hotel and meeting & event industry in Europe more sustainable. Our goal is to expand our operation across Europe in the years to come, whereby we aim to plant at least 1 million trees per year as of 2025, together with our partners.
Our story
Meetings for Trees is a sub-label of Hotels for Trees and focuses on companies and institutions that want to organise meetings and events in a greener way.
Hotels for Trees was launched in 2021 and grew to a platform with almost 250 partners in more than 40 countries. The principle of this initiative is that hotel guests from participating hotels can skip the in-between room cleaning to plant a tree.
Many of the participating hotel partners were very enthusiastic, but indicated that they were also looking for a way for meeting and event organisers to plant trees to offset the impact of their events. In this case, these trees do not come from savings on services provided by the partner, but are paid for by the organiser him/herself.
In response to the many requests and with the help of Founding Partner Meetingselect, Meetings for Trees was launched.
Our core values
Meetings for Trees is based on a concept that is “easy” for both meeting bookers as well as the meeting venue. Meeting bookers choose how many trees they want to plant. Participation for meeting venues is a “no-brainer” as there is no entry fee and the meeting bookers pay for the trees.