A passenger on board the stuck luxury cruise ship in Greenland told CNN that her biggest fear while stranded for days was that they would run out of alcohol on board.
25.08.2023 - 14:34 / skift.com / Sean Oneill / Schubert Lou
Trip.com Group said on Friday it had tapped a $1.5 billion sustainability-linked loan facility, meaning that the financing terms link the debt’s interest rates to the Chinese online travel giant’s performance against specific environmental targets.
The Shanghai-based company will use three-year dual-tranche term loan facility to refinance some of its debt, and the rest for general corporate purposes.
The move appeared to be the first time a major online travel player adopted green finance. Last year, a shareholder initiative prodded Booking Holdings to do a climate change report. The report came out this year. In October, the company said its Booking.com brand would add emissions estimates to bookings soon. Trip.com-owned Skyscanner has estimated flight emissions for consumers for a few years.
Climate-related risk is on investors’ minds as they look at their portfolios. For travel in general, the sustainability-linked bond may provide more flexibility for investors worried about this issue, said Leslie Samuelrich, president of Boston-based Green Century Capital Management. Sustainability-linked bonds are different from green bonds.They set macro targets for a company, while green bonds commit to specific projects.
The investment concept is growing fast, Samuelrich said. Last year, lenders issued $103 billion in sustainability-linked bonds to companies across various industries. The year before that, it was about $12 billion.
In April, Ascott Residence Trust issued a sustainability-linked bond — apparently the first in the hotel sector — worth about $143 million ($200 million Singaporean). Ascott Residence Trust has committed to a sustainability performance target of greening half of its total portfolio by 2025, and its interest rates would essentially rise on the loan facility if it fails to meet the target.
The process remains murky and slow burn, though. There’s a debate about measuring the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to the climate emergency. IFRS Foundation, the international accounting standards-setting body, has this year been working on setting standards for emissions-focused reporting. Their work, and the work of other organizations, will adjust how investors evaluate climate risk — a knotty task inviting skepticism from some critics.
Side note: Trip.com’s chief commercial officer Schubert Lou will talk about the international division of Trip.com Group at Skift Global Forum East in Dubai on Dec. 14.
A passenger on board the stuck luxury cruise ship in Greenland told CNN that her biggest fear while stranded for days was that they would run out of alcohol on board.
A Norwegian cruise ship with 206 people on board has run aground in northwestern Greenland, authorities said Tuesday.
A luxury cruise carrying 206 passengers is now stuck in a remote part of Greenland after it ran aground.
Trip.com Group today showcased its vision for the future of travel at its Envision 2023 global partner conference. The conference was attended by about 700 industry partners globally.
Governor Josh Green, M.D., today declared in a statewide address that the West Maui communities of Kā‘anapali, Nāpili, Honokōwai, and Kapalua will fully reopen on Sunday, October 8, two months after the August 8 wildfires that destroyed Lahaina.
ITB China, the marketplace for China’s travel industry, is thrilled to announce its collaboration with Trip.com Group, the leading global travel service provider for this year’s highly anticipated event, taking place from 12 – 14 September 2023 in Shanghai.
Private equity firm KSL said on Monday it intends to buy Hersha Hospitality Trust, the owner of 25 U.S. lifestyle hotels, in an all-cash transaction worth about $1.4 billion. The move would take private Hersha at an approximately 60% premium to the real-estate investment trust’s closing stock price on Friday.
Jongyoon Kim, the CEO of South Korea-based superapp Yanolja, sees Tesla as the metaphor for its company highlighting how the electronic vehicle company has been rethinking the entire value chain.
China’s Trip.com has struck two new partnerships, covering the UK and Asia Pacific, to give customers the opportunity to delay or spread out payments for their purchases.
The Hawaiian government this week rescinded the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s U.S. tourism contract with the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a community non-profit, providing a potential setback for the authority’s sustainable tourism efforts. The reason for the government’s rescission was that the contract needed to be separated into two, one for marketing and the other for visitor management and community relations.
Here are some excerpts from Daily Lodging Report by Alan Woinski from the past week. If you’re not a subscriber, you should be. Get news on hotel deals, development, stocks, and career moves. Sign up here, now.
Even though China’s recent relaxation of Covid measures is widely seen as a step forward for travel, Trip.com is still cautious in the very near term as winter is usually a slack season for both business and leisure travel.