Avanti West Coast has been named Rail Operator Sustainability Partner of the Year at BTN Group’s 2025 Business Travel Sustainability Awards.
The intercity operator’s progress in making sustainable rail travel a viable business alternative for its corporate customers across the west coast resulted in it winning the Rail Operator category.
The awards celebrate actions taken by companies to align their business travel program with corporate objectives and strategies to advance their sustainability practices.
Judges remarked that Avanti West Coast was recognised for its “ambitious and well-structured sustainability strategy and strong collaboration with corporate clients to encourage modal shift from air to rail”.
They praised the train operator’s effective commercial incentives, booking process, and targets backed by goals aligned to science-based targets – led by its Corporate Sales Team with the support of colleagues from Avanti’s Responsible Business Team.
Working with one of its corporate clients, Mott MacDonald (a global engineering, management and development consultancy), Avanti introduced a fare framework to help them achieve modal shift from air to rail between London and Glasgow.
Designed to be economically attractive by being flexible and competitive, the Great Scot fare, offers three classes of business travel which can be used in two timeframes for journeys between two key city centre office locations.
The fare was integrated into Mott MacDonald’s online booking platform – with journey time differences between rail and air travel, as well as carbon emissions highlighted – enabling the company to prioritise rail travel and helping to reduce its corporate travel environmental impact.
Through the partnership, Mott MacDonald achieved 56 percent of rail market share on the route between London and Glasgow – a 49 percent increase since the framework was introduced in August 2023. It also saw a 43 percent reduction in year-on-year carbon emissions from air travel on routes where new guidance was applied – the equivalent of 120 tonnes of CO2 emissions or eight round trips from London to Sydney in business class.
Sarah Copley, Commercial Director at Avanti West Coast, said: “We’re delighted to be recognised in this way. This achievement is a testament to the innovation, ambition, and dedication of our Corporate Sales and Sustainability Teams to help customers rise to the challenge of net zero. Our partnership with Mott MacDonald is a great example of this, where we’ve enabled them to prioritise rail travel and in turn reduce their environmental impact.
“By providing a sustainable way to connect business travellers to major destinations across the UK that is competitively priced and helps them to remain productive while on the move, we hope to encourage more business customers to make rail their transport of choice.”
Mike Heath, Travel Specialist at Mott MacDonald, said: “We have greatly enjoyed collaborating with Avanti West Coast on our sustainable business travel efforts. Their support has been instrumental in helping Mott MacDonald shift towards lower carbon travel, contributing towards emissions reductions required for our science-based targets.
“This partnership has been essential for our Travel function in driving forward our behaviour change initiatives and reinforcing our sustainability commitments. We are delighted to be featured as part of their sustainability partner of the year submission.”
Image credit: Avanti West Coast
