Maintaining quality accommodations and services while reducing costs is the Holy Grail for many in the hospitality industry. This can be a challenge, given that hotels need to carefully select the aspects of operations that can be targeted for cost-cutting measures. Fortunately, state-of-the-art HVAC and lighting controls have allowed many hotels to reduce costs by promoting energy efficiency without sacrificing quality.

In hotels and other similar establishments, energy consumption accounts for three to six percent of the total operating costs. Heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and electronic appliances are some of the biggest power consumption culprits. This is true not just for larger, established hotels, but even small or start-up establishments.

Reducing waste is the common approach to lowering electricity cost, as many hotels consume electricity unnecessarily. Guests are often the primary cause for the power expenditure. Many use more lights than necessary, operate several electronic devices all at once, and even leave these running when they leave a room. This is not always intentional, however, and is often a result of a guest’s forgetting to deactivate the lights or the HVAC system, or not knowing how to operate their controls.

Given these, hotels should look into intelligent HVAC and lighting controls that are not just easy to use, but that can also conserve electricity even without a guest’s active involvement.

For example, instead of using a myriad switches for the lights, heat, air conditioning, and more, a hotel can implement a centralized lighting and HVAC system for the room, and have one device that controls its various features. The lighting controller can be pre-configured with different settings according to the guests’ needs: bright light or dim, night light, etc. It can also contain other controls such as for operating motorized drapes. Some systems even use advanced touch screen technology as a controller, which makes activating, deactivating, or setting room features more convenient.

HVAC and lighting controls can also work through a keycard system. A guest initiates control over the lighting and HVAC by inserting the keycard into a keycard reader. These will then be set to energy saving mode upon the removal of the keycard. This ensures that minimal power is consumed when a guest is not occupying the room. It’s a simple but effective means to prevent the unnecessary use of electricity.

Certain HVAC and lighting controls can afford hotels as much as 30 to 50 percent savings on guest room utility costs, making them a worthy investment for hotels looking for effective cost-cutting measures.