Many hotels will operate for less hours due to high utility costs. The hotel industry has so far ignored investments in energy efficiency, but the current energy crisis and record prices are forcing hoteliers to reevaluate these aspects.

“The hotel base in Romania is very old. In the hotel industry, the utilities side has been neglected until now. Any hotel is an energy consumer. It didn’t hurt until now, but now it hurts. But there is an opening for new solutions and reinvention. Now is the time. There are hotels that will operate with a reduced schedule and only if they have enough guests”, said Mircea Drăghici, Managing Partner Est Hospitality Consulting, at the conference “Cogeneration for energy efficiency and renewables”, organized by Energynomics.

According to Drăghici, the higher the number of stars of a hotel, the higher the energy consumption. For example, the costs of a hotel that has a swimming pool “grow exponentially” because a lot of energy is consumed to maintain a certain temperature of the water. At the same time, the filters of a swimming pool must be checked periodically because a defective filter generates a significant increase in energy consumption.

In order to achieve a considerable reduction in energy costs, hoteliers should have the clearest possible picture of energy consumption in order to be able to target investments in efficiency with the greatest possible precision. Investments made without prior analysis could even cause additional costs.

“We saw that the latest trend is to replace all the bulbs, but you won’t see any efficiency, you’ll even see higher costs because these bulbs are quite expensive.

“The conference “Cogeneration for energy efficiency and renewables” was organized by Energynomics with the support of our partners: Chimcomplex, Electro-Service RB, ENGIE Romania, Horváth, Kawasaki Gas Turbine Europe GmbH.