Decarbonising Tourism: Real-Time Carbon Tokenomics for the Visitor Economy
SBS academics with expertise in hospitality management and blockchain technology have partnered with Therme Group, a global organisation focused on urban wellbeing destinations, to develop new digital platforms that significantly enhance the tourism industry's ability to measure and reduce its carbon footprint.
Overview
Across several research projects, Surrey's Institute for Sustainability, the Academy of Blockchain and Metaverse Applications, and the Centre for Sustainability and Wellbeing in the Visitor Economy will develop digital platforms for businesses to quickly calculate their carbon emissions and find solutions to mitigate their impact.
Objectives
- Measure emissions dynamically: track CO₂ across the tourism visitor economy—from transport to accommodation—using AI-enhanced analytics.
- Develop Tokenomics platform: employ blockchain and cryptographic tokens to facilitate transparent carbon offsetting and funding of green projects.
- Enhance trust & accountability: design a standardised system that reduces costs and improves traceability, ensuring offset investments reach legitimate environmental projects.
- Produce academic and commercial outputs: develop the first visitor-economy carbon calculator, publish research findings, and present at COP28 and ITB Berlin.
Outputs
This partnership offers transformative potential across multiple fronts. For tourism operators and destinations, the platform provides a dependable and cost‐efficient tool for measuring emissions, enabling them to demonstrate genuine decarbonisation and compliance with climate commitments. By embedding traceable carbon tokenomics, the system promotes investment in credible environmental projects—enhancing accountability and public trust in offsetting claims. Providers of attractions and hospitality services will gain from innovative digital tools that align with regulatory expectations and evolving consumer demands.
From a societal perspective, addressing the 8–11% of global greenhouse gas emissions from tourism is critical. This initiative equips the sector with scalable, data-driven frameworks that underpin the pursuit of net-zero targets and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Ultimately, it sets a precedent for cross-sector applications—highlighting how advanced digital technologies and academicindustry collaboration can drive credible, large-scale sustainability transformations.
In the University of Surrey, we have found a partner who shares our understanding of sustainability as a challenge that can only be addressed from a multidisciplinary perspective. An astonishing intellectual breadth, combined with a culture of collegiality, respect and curiosity, is what will make this partnership a huge success, helping to create the green economy of the future.Therme Group Chairman and CEO Dr Robert Hanea