Viking Line launches ‘green sea conferences’ to cut emissions by 90%

Finnish shipping company Viking Line has launched green sea conferences, a new biofuel-based sustainable initiative offered on the company’s two climate-smart vessels.

The sustainability innovation reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a conference trip by an average of 90%, according to the company.

Each year about 600,000 passengers travel with groups or conferences on Viking Line’s vessels, and all aspects involved in a sea conference have now been subject to a comprehensive sustainability assessment.

Sea conferences have regained their previous popularity after several years of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, Viking Line’s conference capacity on its Helsinki route is being further expanded, when Viking Cinderella returns to Finland, working in tandem with Gabriella.

Sea conferences on Viking Line’s vessels are usually arranged for groups with fewer than 30 people, but meetings for 300–500 people are also held frequently. Sometimes major sea seminars can host up to one thousand participants.

Green Sea Conferences are offered on all departures on the two climate-smart vessels, Viking Glory and Viking Grace, in service on the Turku route.

“Our customers choose sea conferences above all to combine work and pleasure in a cost-effective way, keep the group together and at the same time meet people’s need for physical meetings, a need that has become stronger in recent years. With our new conference product, we can provide all this in such a way that the carbon footprint of their conference trip is small,” Philip Sjöstrand, Head of Sales at Viking Line, said.

“Emissions from a Green Sea Conference are lower because customers who have opted for such a journey travel using renewable biofuel. We have also carried out a detailed sustainability assessment of the other components that are part of a conference trip. Each year more than 19,000 group and conference events with a total of some 600,000 participants are held on our vessels. This means every choice that increases sustainability makes a big difference,” Marika Immonen, Head of Customer Experience at Viking Line, explained.

All waste generated on Viking Line’s vessels is recycled, and food waste is recirculated as raw material for biogas on most of the company’s vessels.

Viking Line said that its corporate customers were involved from the very start in the work to develop the company’s Green Sea Conferences. Conference planners who opt for this package get a carbon footprint report for their trip if they wish.

Viking Line started offering passengers on Viking Glory and Viking Grace the option to purchase biogas equivalent to the amount used for their own travel and thus reduce emissions generated by their travel by an average of 90%. 

“Each year, companies set increasingly ambitious sustainability goals, and it has also become more and more important to employees that their employer’s business is sustainable. By choosing a Green Sea Conference, such conference planners are pioneers and can be certain that the emissions from their conference have been minimized. As early as last summer, we started giving our leisure travellers the option of choosing biofuel,” Dani Lindberg, Viking Line’s Sustainability Manager, said.