For a hotel, energy conservation goes beyond the bottom line, extending into the realms of image and reputation as well as corporate and social responsibility; never more pressing than in the midst of this climate and energy crisis. Guests arrive in their rooms with an acute awareness of carbon foot-printing and energy usage, and it is vitally important to ensure that your hotel has robust energy-management practices in place.
Energy consumption represents a significant 60 percent part of hotels’ CO2 emissions but there are specific actions and measures that hotels can integrate with limited investment that will have immediate effects on their energy usage. It is estimated that taking steps to improve efficiency can reduce overall energy consumption by 30-50%, impacting heavily on both the hotel’s profit margins and environmental impact. However, the saving that your hotel can make will largely depend on the size and type of building you have as well as your commitment to ‘going green.’ Whilst lighting, heating and hot water are arguably the biggest utility costs for a hotelier, there are many factors beyond that.
If the hotel is broken down into three areas, the guest room, the public area and the service area, the TV is clearly a key consideration for the guest bedroom. Whilst brand standards and customer expectations mean that hotel rooms require increasingly big in-room screen sizes, there are ways in which to minimise TVs’ energy usage. Older TVs cost a lot more to run than newer models and LEDs the most more energy efficient; 42” LED TVs use around 70% less energy than a plasma of the same size. Lower power consumption through screens is clearly imperative if looking to lower operating costs. However, there are steps beyond that. Some hotel TVs enable you to set the brightness to within certain parameters which will minimise energy consumption further. On screen information pages and digital welcoming pages indubitably enable a necessary move away from costly and wasteful stationary; It is all very well having in-room messaging about minimising towel laundering but having copious amounts of paperwork creates a conflicting message about your approach to sustainability. It is important however to not rely on leaving TVs on in-between room occupancies. Guests can navigate their way to your on-screen messaging and will now expect the in-room TV to deliver such information in the absence of paperwork. When it comes to the TV content, money has been saved by the move away from fully-fledged systems. Guests now will expect to be able to cast their own content from their personal devices to the in-room screen. This gives them quicker access to their favourite content via applications such as Netflix and Amazon. It is also a secure means of enabling more viewing options, protecting personal data and personal logins.
Forbes Professional has a team of experts that can help you devise the right hotel TV solution for your business. We are a national organisation that works with small boutique hotels as well as large hotel brands and multi-site operations. Whatever your occupancy, size and requirements, we can help find a user and energy efficient solution that will help you meet to meet the ever more exacting standards of customer expectations and corporate responsibilities.
