The thing called sustainability is an important concept that has gathered momentum over the past decade within the global investment community. This has actual effect and significant impact for new as well as the existing hospitality assets.
Hoteliers and investors have increasingly grown aware of the social and environmental impacts of hotel operations and development … so much so, that sustainability now leaks into almost every aspect of the hospitality industry.
Sustainability = Cost Reduction
Driven by a desire to reduce operating costs, a more rigid focus on facility operations and development and a changing attitude from investors towards the environment, a general shift towards the idea of sustainability has taken place.
There are other areas of the hospitality sector that are rather more straightforward to record, analyse and interpret, for example, RevPAR, capitalisation rates and occupancy percentages. However, sustainability has continued to be comparatively more difficult to calculate and measure. The issues of sustainability affect nearly all of the hotel management and ownership characteristics, which have forced the need for an alignment of environmental, social and financial issues to encourage responsible long-term business operations.
There has been a noticeable shift towards sustainability, demonstrated by an increase in the number of sustainability programmes and schemes arising from within the hospitality industry through hotel managers and operators, but externally too, throughout the wider environmental community.
Current trend thinking, specifically in facility management and hospitality operations, focuses on the advantages of operational efficiency and its consequential cost savings, primarily in three areas:
- Energy
- Waste
- Water
Sustainability: Energy
Energy is consumed by hotels for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) operations, cooking fuel, lighting and other various power requirements. Reducing energy intensity one shouldfocus on controlling the facility management view. All these can be achieved through commissioning, a technical, engineering-based approach. Things such as front of house lighting retrofits, sealing of the building envelope and a minimisation of plug loads are effective.
In back of house, proper sensor calibration, the removal of simultaneous cooling and heating, improved equipment and maintenance of a proper building ventilation system are important energy efficiency measures. In addition, renewable energy technology has improved the economics of using alternative energy sources at individual facility levels.