How Do You Lower Your Hotel’s Carbon Footprint?
It’s a well-established fact that good hotels will always prioritize the guest experience – everything else is secondary. But when it comes to issues like power management and energy optimization, the lack of interest is quite apparent. And it’s not really the hotelier’s fault.
Efficient energy management has been an ongoing concern for almost every industry, and there isn’t much that technology has been able to do about optimizing this precious resource better. Especially in a hotel, where there are always several departments that need access to power throughout the day.
But 2016 looks different – this year, we’re witnessing an increased awareness about green projects as the importance of looking after our environment is becoming crucial to the success of not just hospitality, but every trade in existence.
Low-energy Counterparts
Energy efficient devices dominated various sectors of industries as companies went on an energy saving voyage, replacing all high-energy devices with their lower-energy counterparts. Forget about the LEDs replacing the incandescent bulbs – a number of public devices such as vending machines and so on, were replaced with modified devices that consume less power.
These devices may have consumed lesser electricity but the savings were not significant – without an automated system capable of monitoring and cutting power to unnecessary areas of the hotel, even low-energy devices will continue to burn energy all day if left on. What hotels required was an intelligent solution that could integrate to all these devices and control their access to power, in addition to them being low-energy.
Sustainable Energy
Hotels consume a massive amount of power and meeting these demands is among the biggest annual expenditures. By aiming to meet as much of their energy demands through renewable sources, corporations can ensure that their property remains environment-conscious in the eyes of customers. This is important – customers are becoming increasingly environment conscious and green hotels rank higher in their eyes.
While it’s not possible for all properties to build on-site renewable sources of energy, they can still power their properties using clean energy using Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). RECs validate that the power being consumed by a device has been generated by sustainable practices.
Connected Technology
Hotels are full of electrical devices – so many of them in fact, that it’s almost impossible for managers to track the individual power usage of each and every one. And when it comes to occupied rooms, there’s absolutely nothing managers can do to ensure thrifty power usage without influencing the guest’s experience.
Connected devices will revolutionize things here – they will have their own IP addresses and will be able to communicate with one another through low-energy, periodic signals in the form of Bluetooth or WiFi. With almost every device being replaced with its connected counterpart, hotels will be able to optimize power management like never before!
There’s no doubt that power is a major factor for hotels looking to lower their costs but being environment-conscious is about more than just saving energy – it’s also about conserving water, not tolerating littering, and reusing plastics and other materials.
It’s about time we stopped biting the hand that feeds. Start being more environment-conscious today – there’s no meaning in hospitality if we continue to pollute the very planet accommodating all our accommodation providers.