The Institute of Travel Management gave away the inaugural green business travel awards this week. The first ever Project Icarus awards were let open to suppliers across seven sectors. The main question asked to the participants was how they could help the buyers bring down carbon emission, besides the list of concrete efforts from their side to reduce their own carbon footprint.

Judged for innovation, sustainability, leadership, transferability and scalability, the judgment was marked by a panel of eight judges. Earlier, the judges had agreed upon a minimum mark for each entry enabling the application to be considered for the award.

The list of winners includes:
Technology - Carbon Consulting
Hotels - Apex Hotels
Ground Transport - Radio Taxis
Agency - Carlson Wagonlit Travel
Rail - Virgin Trains
Air - easyJet
Consultancies - no award

ITM executive director, Paul Tilstone remarked during his message to Supplymanagement.com that no single member under the consultancies category had secured the minimum mark. However, it can be well understood that with these awards, the consciouness about green tourism is going to increase, and then these marks will be increasing surely.

He too said, "This being the first year of the awards, in some categories not all the suppliers that we wanted to enter did. This event does, however, make people sit up and realise they could have been in a position to receive one of these awards and that will probably push them to enter next year."