Energy saving hotels - 6 steps to sustainable stays
When planning a holiday, sustainability is often the last thing on your guests’ minds. But the travel and tourism industry contributes a shocking 9-12% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. That’s a huge slice of the global warming pie!
However, the hospitality sector of tomorrow rests on our sustainable practices today. So, we’ve been working with hotels around the world to install Eniscopes, enabling them to become champions for energy efficiency and sustainability in their sector.
Our intelligent real-time energy monitoring identifies patterns of energy wastage in hotels, so they can target key energy efficiency opportunities and optimise operations to save energy and money.
But with people at the heart of the hospitality industry, the guests play a pivotal role too. According to Booking.com, 55% of travellers are now more concerned about making sustainable choices than last year. So, influencing guest behaviour is key if we want to minimise the damaging impact of the travel and tourism industry on our planet.
The powerful combination of specialist energy monitoring and targeting alongside encouraging your guests to be more energy efficient can achieve incredible results. We’ve seen this in eco-conscious hotels all over the world:
- The Movenpick hotel in Nairobi Kenya is saving $4,000 every month on their energy bills with the help of Eniscope
- Energy monitoring has helped De Vere hotels to achieve savings of more than £67,000 in a single month at one of their hotel locations in the UK
- We’ve helped Barons Eden hotels identify £50,000-70,000 annual savings so far across two hotels in their estate
- Marriot International’s 5* Sankara Hotel saves 14.16% of their energy consumption with an Eniscope-driven IoT solution.
But how can you empower your guests to be more environmentally friendly during their stay in your energy-saving hotel?
Empowering eco-conscious hotel guests
It’s easy for guests to make small changes to reduce their carbon footprint and become more environmentally friendly. Here are our top tips for encouraging your guests to be greener:
- Reuse towels and bedding: Save water and energy!
Did you know, the average hotel laundry service accounts for 16% of water use in a typical hotel? Every 10kg towel washed consumes at least 50 litres of water! So, something as simple as asking your guests to reuse towels and bedding (like they would at home) makes a significant impact on conservation efforts in hotels. But beyond saving water, reusing towels and bed linen saves energy on laundry loads too, so it’s a double win!
- Conserve water: Every drop counts!
Water is a precious resource, so it’s important not to let taps run unnecessarily. Easy changes like taking shorter showers and turning off the taps while brushing your teeth will make a difference. So, encouraging your guests to do their bit to conserve water during their stay can help reduce water usage in rooms by up to 5%. Collectively across all the rooms in your hotel, this could save hundreds of gallons of water every year!
- Save energy: It’s a simple switch!
Flicking a switch is easy. So let’s ensure that TVs, lights, and appliances like the mini-bar are turned off when rooms are unoccupied, and let’s encourage guests to switch them off when they leave their room too. Guests can further cut their energy usage by enjoying natural light during the day rather than turning on the lights when they’re not needed. Similarly, charging devices in the morning instead of overnight can also limit unnecessary energy consumption.
- Optimise temperature: Use AC wisely!
Air conditioning (AC) is one of the biggest drains of energy in a hotel. It’s often left on in unoccupied rooms and the temperature can be set unnecessarily low, burning more energy than needed to cool a room. So, if guests turn off the AC when they leave or turn the temperature up by just a few degrees in hot climates or down by a few degrees in cold climates, it can save masses of energy. We’d advise setting the AC temperature to 22 degrees Celsius in guest rooms to reduce your hotel’s overall energy consumption too.
- Recycle and reduce single-use plastics: Make a difference!
Hotels can reduce the amount of single-use plastic by limiting the number of miniature toiletries in bathrooms. You can also support recycling by supplying suitable waste bins in rooms to make it easy for visitors. Guests can choose reusable items and local products, as well as avoiding single-use plastics when travelling too. From refillable water bottles and eco-friendly products, to buying local and recycling waste - small changes have a big impact on the planet.
- Go one step further: Take the stairs to boost health and save energy!
Elevators use a hotel’s energy resources to operate day and night, but the stairs use your guests’ energy reserves instead. So, by encouraging visitors to take the stairs once or twice a day (where possible) instead of hopping in the elevator, your guests can reduce their electricity consumption while staying fit and healthy in the process. Every step counts!
The travel and tourism industry significantly contributes to global carbon emissions. But sustainability is everyone’s responsibility – both hotels and guests alike. Energy management in hotels is vital. The stakes are high, but small changes can collectively make a big difference when it comes to energy efficiency in hotels. So, let’s forge a more sustainable future, together.
