A carbon offset and carbon removal are not the same thing, and the gap between them decides whether your trip's climate claim holds up. An offset usually pays for an emission to be avoided somewhere else (a forest protected, a wind farm built). A removal physically extracts CO2 that is already in the atmosphere and stores it. Avoidance can slow the problem; only removal reverses it. For travel, where flying is the dominant and hardest-to-cut emission, the distinction is the difference between a feel-good label and credible climate action.
By the IMPT Hotels editorial team · Updated 2026-05-29
The cleanest way to read any climate claim attached to a trip is to ask one question: did this prevent a future emission, or did it take carbon out of the air? Those are two different physical actions.
Avoidance (the bulk of what is loosely called 'offsetting') funds projects that keep CO2 from being emitted in the first place. Typical examples are REDD+ rainforest-protection schemes, renewable-energy build-out in developing markets, and methane capture. The atmosphere never gets the molecule, but no existing CO2 is taken back down.
Removal does the opposite. It draws CO2 that has already been released back out of the atmosphere and stores it. This spans nature-based methods (afforestation, reforestation, soil and biochar) and engineered ones (direct air capture, enhanced rock weathering). Both major registries, Verra's Verified Carbon Standard and the Gold Standard, certify projects in both categories, so the certification logo alone does not tell you which type you bought; the methodology and project type do.
The practical takeaway for a traveller: a credit labelled simply 'carbon neutral' is most often an avoidance credit, which is cheaper but does nothing to undo emissions already in the sky. Removal is what counteracts the carbon a flight actually puts up there.
Travel's footprint is concentrated in transport, and transport's footprint is concentrated in flying. Aviation accounted for roughly 2.05% of human-caused CO2 in 2023, but its warming impact is larger because of non-CO2 effects: contrails and other high-altitude forcings mean aviation is responsible for closer to 4% of human-induced global warming. Roughly two-thirds of that warming comes from effects other than CO2.
Air travel also dominates the tourism footprint specifically. In 2023, 58% of international tourists reached their destination by air, and a long-standing estimate attributes around 40% of tourism's total CO2 to air transport alone.
That matters because aviation is a hard-to-abate sector. There is no clean, scalable substitute for jet fuel at the volumes flown today, so a flight's emissions are largely unavoidable in the near term. When you cannot reduce an emission at source, avoidance credits do not balance it; the carbon is still added. This is exactly the case where credible frameworks say removal, not avoidance, is the appropriate counterbalance.
The accommodation side is more reducible than flying, which is why hotel performance is measurable and improving. The Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking (CHSB) Index, which pools energy, water and carbon data from over 20,000 hotels worldwide, lets a property compare its carbon-per-occupied-room against peers in the same city and climate zone, and shows wide variation by location and asset class. A stay's footprint can often be cut directly; a flight's usually has to be removed.
Permanence is how long the carbon stays out of the atmosphere, and it is the single biggest quality difference between credit types. A removal is only as good as its storage. If a project plants trees that later burn, are logged, or die in drought, the stored carbon returns and the climate benefit is reversed.
The contrast is stark. Forest and soil storage can be undone in years to decades. Engineered storage is measured in centuries to millennia. Biochar, made by converting biomass to a stable charcoal-like solid, locks carbon away for at least a century and potentially hundreds to thousands of years, at a 2025 market price averaging roughly $164 per tonne. Direct air capture with geological storage can hold CO2 for many centuries but costs far more, in the range of $600 to $1,200 per tonne, because pulling CO2 from ambient air (about 0.04% of it) is energy-intensive. Cheap avoidance credits, by contrast, often trade at $3 to $15 per tonne, and that low price reflects both lower cost and, in many cases, lower confidence.
Confidence is not theoretical. A nine-month investigation published in January 2023 by the Guardian, Die Zeit and SourceMaterial analysed Verra's rainforest (REDD+) avoidance projects and concluded that more than 90% of the credits studied were likely 'phantom credits' that did not represent real reductions. Verra disputed the methodology, but the episode reset the market's view of cheap forest-avoidance credits and accelerated demand for measurable, durable removal.
The headline rule for any buyer: match the durability of the storage to the permanence of the emission. CO2 from burning jet fuel persists in the atmosphere for centuries, so the most defensible counterbalance is removal with storage that also lasts centuries, not a credit that could reverse in a decade.
Two reference points have become the de facto benchmarks, and both point the same way. The Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting, revised in 2024, call for a deliberate shift away from avoidance and toward removals, and toward removals with durable, low-reversal-risk storage. They set the direction of travel as 100% removal credits to balance any residual emissions by the 2050 net-zero date.
The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) frames the same logic as a 'mitigation hierarchy': cut your own emissions first, and do not use credits to claim those cuts. In the SBTi view, offsets are not a substitute for reduction; credits come in only to neutralise the residual emissions you genuinely cannot eliminate, and that neutralisation should increasingly be removal.
For a traveller the principle scales down cleanly into a simple order of operations. First, reduce: fly less often, fly direct (take-off and landing burn disproportionately), choose rail for shorter legs, and pick lower-impact accommodation. Second, for the emissions you cannot avoid, prefer durable removal over cheap avoidance when you compensate. Buying a credit should be the last step, not the first, and never a licence to fly more.
The travel industry is full of vague 'green' and 'carbon neutral' labels that do not survive scrutiny. A few checks separate substance from marketing.
Look for third-party certification, not self-declared badges. For accommodation, the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) sets the recognised baseline standard for hotels; it was established in 2007 with support from the UN Environment Programme and the UN World Tourism Organization, and it accredits the certification bodies that audit hotels rather than certifying properties itself. A hotel certified under a GSTC-recognised scheme has been independently assessed against criteria covering energy, water, waste and community impact.
When a platform or operator says it offsets, ask what it actually buys. Credible answers name the registry (Verra's Verified Carbon Standard or the Gold Standard), the project type, and ideally whether the credits are avoidance or removal. A claim that cannot identify the project type is a red flag.
IMPT Hotels (impthotels.com) is one example of a carbon-neutral booking model built around this transparency: rooms are bookable at the same price as booking direct, and a portion of each booking funds verified climate projects certified to standards such as the Verra Verified Carbon Standard and the Gold Standard. The broader point holds for any platform you use, though: the question is not whether climate language appears on the page, but whether the underlying credits are certified, durable, and honestly described as avoidance or removal.
Same price as booking direct — and a share of your booking funds verified climate projects (Verra VCS & Gold Standard).
Find carbon-neutral hotels →No. Most offsets are avoidance credits: they pay to prevent a future emission elsewhere (protecting a forest, building renewables) but do not take existing CO2 out of the air. Carbon removal physically extracts CO2 already in the atmosphere and stores it. Both can be certified by Verra or the Gold Standard, so the logo alone does not tell you which one you bought; the project type does.
Aviation is hard to abate, there is no clean substitute for jet fuel at today's volumes, so a flight's emissions are largely unavoidable in the near term. Avoidance credits do not undo carbon that has already been emitted, whereas removal does. Aviation also drives a disproportionate share of warming through non-CO2 effects like contrails, which is part of why credible frameworks favour durable removal to counterbalance unavoidable flight emissions.
It is how long the carbon stays out of the atmosphere. Forest and soil storage can reverse within years to decades if trees burn or are logged. Engineered storage such as biochar (a century or more) or direct air capture with geological storage (many centuries) is far more durable. Because CO2 from jet fuel persists for centuries, the most defensible counterbalance is removal with storage that lasts a comparable timeframe.
Cheap avoidance credits, often $3 to $15 per tonne, can be legitimate, but the low price reflects lower cost and frequently lower confidence. A 2023 investigation by the Guardian, Die Zeit and SourceMaterial found that more than 90% of the Verra rainforest avoidance credits it studied were likely 'phantom credits' that did not represent real reductions. The lesson is to check the project, not just the price.
Look for independent, third-party certification rather than self-declared 'eco' labels. The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), backed by the UN Environment Programme and UN World Tourism Organization, sets the recognised baseline for hotels and accredits the bodies that audit them. A hotel certified under a GSTC-recognised scheme has been independently assessed on energy, water, waste and community impact.
Not on its own. Credible frameworks like SBTi and the Oxford Principles put reduction first: cut emissions at source before compensating, and never treat a credit as a licence to travel more. Compensation should cover only the emissions you genuinely cannot avoid, and durable removal is a stronger counterbalance than cheap avoidance.