Energy Saving Advice for Hotels & Guest Houses
Dedicated tips and advice on saving energy and money on your energy bills within hotels and guest houses, all whilst helping to keep your staff and guests warm and happy…
Business energy contract due to renew? Call us on 0800 9777 000 or fill in our energy quote form to see how much you could save…
How to save money on hotel’s energy bills
As a hotel owner or manager, you will already be well aware that your energy and utility bills account for a large portion of your business expenses and therefore, how important hotel energy savings are to helping you remain profitable. These expenses can tear away at a large part of your profits and by extension your ability to expand or invest more in your hotel and facilities.
Why make energy-saving improvements?
Although many hotels, guest houses and B&Bs may decide to put off making changes to improve the energy efficiency of their establishments while they have paying guests. Often deciding to carry on, business as usual and leave the changes until another day.
This often leads to months, even years before making changes to their hotels and facilities to make them more eco-friendly and cost-effective to run and operate for their guests. Read on to discover innovative ways to keep those costs down and save money on your energy bills.
Why should I reduce my hotel’s energy consumption?
Reducing the energy consumption of hotels or guest houses isn’t just good business practice to help reduce your bills. It could also be seen as a positive by guests who are actively seeking out ways to reduce their carbon footprint.
As people in the UK and across the World choose to live a more green lifestyle, they’ll begin to seek out options for holidays and other overnight stays that offer greener and more eco-friendly options. This will evidently increase bookings for accommodation that offers these benefits as part of their overnight stays. Drawing in customers who have a passion for environmentally friendly businesses.
Although it can often feel like a long way off, with the UK government aiming to get to net zero emissions by 2050, moving your business towards those goals early, along with making it more efficient today will leave you in good stead in the long run.
7 Tips to reduce energy consumption for hotels and guest houses
Now we’ve discussed why it could be beneficial to move your hotel or guest accommodation in a more eco-friendly direction. Here are some great tips you can use to help your business save money, including some suggestions and changes that could be put into place today.
1. Get a motion sensor for your corridor lighting
An issue for many hotels is that many floors and walkways need to remain lit throughout the evening and overnight to provide guests, staff and other visitors with adequate lighting, should they come back late, or leave early before daybreak.
One option that is often used in some less used and populated areas is time lag switches, often also known as time delay switches. These switches will be turned on for a predetermined time before moving back to the off position again. Thus ensuring lights will not be left on any longer than necessary.
However, in areas where people with little knowledge of the layout of the area such as corridors and walkways used by guests, this may not be the safest way of providing lighting. Some guests may not realise there are light switches available and of course, there may be some distance between their room entrances and the nearest available light switch.
For this reason, motion-activated lighting will not only be the easiest way to provide overnight lighting for guests but also the safest. As well as the obvious benefits for both guests and staff, they could also save as much as 10% on energy costs when lighting these areas of the hotel or guest house.
2. Make the emergency exit signs and areas eco-friendly
Of course, you cannot remove the emergency exit signs entirely and we’re sure many hotel owners and managers would never dream of doing so. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find a more energy-efficient way of lighting these signs and the emergency exit routes in these areas.
If you have older signs and emergency lighting within these areas which use high-wattage bulbs, you should consider replacing these with energy-saving lightbulbs such as LEDs. Modern signage lighting will also make use of LEDs which should help to save your hotel money, whilst ensuring the safety of your guests and staff.
3. Smart keycards can help stop waste
Larger hotels will likely have already moved towards using smart keycards for accessing their rooms. For those smaller hotels and guest houses with the finances, they could also consider implementing a similar system. Many hotels use their smart keycard systems to ensure that lighting and even electrical appliances aren’t wasting energy when your guests aren’t using the room.
While in and using the room, the guest must insert their room card into a slot to activate their electricity. Then when they leave the room, they remove the key which then switches off the lights and other electrical appliances in the room, so you’re not paying to light and entertain an empty room.
Unfortunately, not everybody is as environmentally conscious as you’d like when it comes to helping you save money on your energy bills! For those with guest accommodation that cannot afford to install such systems. Even a polite notice asking guests to ensure that lights and non-essential electrical items are left switched off when not in their rooms, may be all that is needed in some cases.
4. Use durable, not disposable
It’s hard to avoid the news about the amount of single-use plastics many uses and throw away, as they ultimately end up in landfills or even worse our waterways and oceans. Finding ways to provide your guests with reusable items and more easily recyclable drinks and food containers for instance will help.
For instance, if you sell or provide guests with takeaway drinks such as coffee, using more environmentally friendly options for these drinks will increase your environmental credentials. You could even offer discounted drinks or other incentives for those who buy your branded, reusable hot drink cups.
This would help cut down on your costs since you’d have fewer ceramic mugs to wash after every use or mean you’d be spending less money on single-use, takeaway plastic or disposable cups. So, one small change could potentially have a very big impact on your business costs.
You could play a part in this by educating your staff, along with your guests on the need to be more careful with their plastic waste. Along with the steps that you, as a business have taken to reduce your energy usage and plastic waste.
Other benefits include:
✔ Cutting down on the amount of collection waste that you need to pay to be collected and taken away.
✔ By buying in bulk, you’ll not only save money but also cut down on your delivery costs.
✔ Selling or providing free, reusable containers with your branding to your guests, will act as advertising for your business when your guests are away from your hotel.
5. Switch to more economical low-flush toilets
Most years during the summer months, we all wait for the inevitable talk of hosepipe bans to be mentioned and come into force. It’s not just during the summer when we need to be saving water and not only because of the risk of a hosepipe ban.
Saving water not only helps the environment but can also help to cut down on your water bills. Older toilets can use on average around 13 litres of water for each and every flush. Then if we factor in the average person will flush the toilet five times a day, that equates to 1825 flushes a year. Using an older toilet this could mean as much as 23,725 litres of water is used on average, just flushing the toilet!
However, switching to a more modern toilet which uses far less water for each and every flush could save a lot of money on your water bills. Some modern toilets will use between 4.5 litres and 6 litres on average, so based on the same average person flushing a 6-litre toilet five times a day. That would equate to an average of 10,950 litres, which would be a saving of 12,775 litres of water per person, per year!
How many toilets does your hotel, guest house or B&B have? One per room, then there are the staff toilets and other public toilets for general use by all guests all adding to the overall total. So even in a smaller hotel or guest house, the costs incurred from replacing any older and less efficient toilets could be recouped through savings on your water bills over the coming years.
6. Restaurants can add to the energy cost
Hotels, guest houses and B&Bs that provide the option of cooked meals to their guests, will be well aware of the energy costs associated with running a professional kitchen environment. Especially when those kitchens are in operation most of the day, whilst their restaurants are open to their guests and visitors.
Even a B&B that only provides breakfast to guests, will still have to ensure their fridges and freezers are kept on 24/7 to store foods. For other hotels and guest houses serving food all day, dishwashers and cleaning equipment will also be on several times a day, along with cookers, hobs and other equipment.
All of which will contribute to the costs of running a kitchen and serving food to guests and visitors. As so, you may be interested to see how you can save energy in restaurants and professional kitchens.
7. Make hotel energy savings by reviewing your energy contracts
Is your hotel, guest house or B&B one of the over 1.3 million UK businesses that are overpaying on their energy bills? Don’t worry if you don’t know. This is often due to being on the wrong contract, never renewing and never checking the market.
Sounds boring right? Don’t worry, when it comes to your hotel, guest house or B&B’s business energy contracts, Exchange Utility are here to help you make an informed decision that will help to save you time searching, as well as ultimately saving you money on energy bills.
At Exchange Utility, we’re working to combat unnecessarily high energy costs for businesses in every sector, including hotels, guest houses and B&Bs, by providing a business energy comparison service.
No matter whether your business operates in multiple different industries or you’re just interested to see what other helpful energy savings tips our team have been able to come up with. Take a look at our other business energy-saving advice for more tips and inspiration to use within your business.
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✔ Contact Exchange Utility to switch your energy tariff in as little as 5 days
✔ We have years of experience in the comparison of businesses’ gas
✔ We have built a solid reputation for being a reliable, independent and trustworthy comparison company
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Business energy contract due to renew? Call us on 0800 9777 000 or fill in our energy quote form to see how much you could save…
