Shining a light on green technology

By Louise Oakley  www.arabianbusiness.com

With new eco-friendly gadgets on the market, there has never been a better time to make your hotel environmentally friendly.

Travellers’ increasing awareness of green issues has encouraged the region’s hotels to adopt a more eco-friendly approach to business. And with the introduction of new green technology, there has never been a better time for hoteliers to improve on their hotel’s eco-credentials.

Tom Lord, hotel manager of InterContinental Dubai Festival City – which has just installed LED lighting from Philips – says now is the time to invest in environmentally friendly technology.

“There is a definite shift in a lot of corporate business towards responsible business, corporate social responsibility, and so on. So if you’re a hotel in the Middle East – or indeed anywhere in the world – your clients now want you to be greener, but I think it’s also aligned with the fact that the hotel industry is only going the same way as everybody else,” Lord says.

“We are all moving towards awareness of the environment and the fact that there do need to be some changes, but also the fact that there are some fantastic green solutions out there right now means that you would be crazy not to look in to them,” he adds.

Real savings

But will the introduction of modern ‘green’ technology truly make a difference to the environment?

Louis Hakim, chairman of Philips Middle East and VP Royal Philips Electronics, believes that using new technology means that hotels do not need to resort to a complete overhaul of their building system  in order to be more eco-friendly.

“LED lighting solutions consume less power compared to conventional lighting systems, yet  give the same lighting output and generate less heat,” Hakim says.

“LED bulbs use 20% of the power of the current incandescent bulbs and last up to 25,000 hours, compared with 1000 hours for a standard bulb and 8000 for a CFL. That’s 17 years if the bulb is switched on for four hours a day. Hotels often have the lights in common areas on for most of the time,” he adds.

Solutions such as LED lighting are a far cry from larger-scale solutions such as solar panels, which have traditionally been perceived as the pinnacle of green buildings, but, says Lord, it is not necessary to adopt such solutions, as the smaller things can make a big difference.

“I think that changing existing items to more energy efficient offerings, such as using LED lighting, will be more practical and get done a lot more quickly than trying to install solar panels to run a hotel that’s been stood there for 20 years – you’ve got to be realistic about this – if you were planning to run a hotel entirely out of solar you would need a significant number of solar panels, and once your hotel has already been built, it is difficult to install,” Lord asserts.

Tarek Zakaria, ABB’s intelligent building system manager for the Gulf region, says that the use of energy efficient technology can have several desirable effects.

“First what you will have is a guest who appreciates what the hotel and the chain is doing to reduce its energy and water consumption. Many guests do want companies to promote the ‘go green’ initiative by adopting solutions that would increase comfort and also have less impact on the environment,” he says.

“A second reason why we do believe people care, even indirectly, is because of cost. If a hotel is saving 30% on energy costs, they could pass this on to the customer. It doesn’t take much to work out that people will be happier if the cost of a service is reduced, especially if there’s little distinction between comparable services, say for example two five-star hotels,” adds Zakaria.

Rajeev Abraham, buildings solutions manager – hotels, Schneider Electric EMEA, agrees that hoteliers are looking at the added benefit of the cost saving that comes with reducing energy consumption.

“Hotels have a sharp eye on return on capital investment; ideally it should be about 36-42 months. Therefore any form of energy management that can provide this kind of ROI becomes interesting to hoteliers,” he says.

The savings that hotels could stand to make could have a significant impact on their bottom line, Zakaria confirms.

“According to a study in 2009 conducted by energy consultancy firm Farnek Avireal, a typical five-star hotel in Dubai has a total energy bill of up to AED 7 million (US$1.9m) a year. With ABB technology these costs can be reduced drastically by making energy usage more efficient,” he states.

Incentives and integration

Providing a clear incentive to be more environmentally friendly is key to encouraging guests, as well as hotels and chains, to participate in green initiatives, argues cluster director of technology for Mövenpick, Issam Abbas.

“With the eco-friendly room and the guest rewards/incentive scheme, it’s all about integration between the in-room management system (e.g. inncom), the telephone system (e.g. Cisco Call Manager/Nevotek), and the property management system (e.g. Opera),” he says.

“Most of the hotels have the above mentioned systems installed, however, not integrated. A minor integration would make those systems talk to each other and come up with an “eco-friendly” room feature. This would materialise by programming a button on the guest room phone,  so that when it is pressed it dims the guest room lights and sets the AC to energy saving mode. That’s when the incentive counter on the PMS system starts ticking and the more hours the guest spends on “eco-friendly” mode the more incentive/rewards he/she gets. Those rewards could be free room nights, meals, and so on,” Abbas adds.

And making the most of the available technology can have a significant effect on a hotel’s energy output, says Rotana corporate vice president IT, Samir Abi Frem.

“When it comes to energy consumption and savings, the in-room management system is one of the most important systems we have,” says Frem.

“Using the door lock card, we are able to identify whether a staff member or a guest is in the room, and alter the settings accordingly. The system also identifies when there is no one in the room, so the air-conditioning and lights will stay off. This way we can save energy without compromising on guest comfort,” he adds.

The future

The apparent simplicity of becoming a greener hotel suggests that more hoteliers will look at adopting green technology solutions over time, argues Lord.

“I think with the emerging trends in technology there is every reason to be greener. There is a lot out there about the way that you would power a building; you would do all sorts of things in the future that we haven’t yet looked in to. We have a building and our aim is just to make it as sustainable and as responsible as possible and when you have got that kind of building, you’re limited in the amount of technology that you can bring through – it is things like waterless urinals, it’s cutting down on that water. I don’t ever think we’ll get to waterless showers over here but I think they do exist somewhere,” says Lord.

And, says Hakim, with the introduction of many smaller environmentally friendly technology products, hoteliers can easily use green solutions across their properties.

“We strive to make it easy to save energy and reduce the effects of climate change by enabling consumers to make simple choices about the products they buy and the impact they have before, during and at the end of their life cycle,” he asserts.

“Philips has a wide range of energy saving consumer lifestyle products from TVs and DVDs to irons and vacuum cleaners designed to conveniently reduce their impact on the environment without compromising on performance or design. We reported that 31% of total 2009 sales stemmed from the sale of green products compared to 22% in 2008,” Hakim adds.

Abraham believes that the ease of ‘going-green’ will prompt an increase in hotels utilising the available green technology in future.

“Of course more hotels will look at green solutions because it has proven to be a perfect business model and the ROI is clear,” he says. “It is just a matter of time before this trend will grow, and it is already off to a great start – especially with international organisations recognising such efforts and awarding hotels and executives accordingly.”

There is no question that the future will see more hotels adopting an eco-friendly stance with their technology, says Zakaria.

“There will be more hotels going green because customers are asking for this, because governments are legislating for this, and also because hotels themselves are looking to differentiate. The added bonus from ABB’s point of view is that our solutions actually increase the comfort of guests in addition to saving energy, so it’s a win-win situation from the hotel’s perspective; they save money and they improve their customer experience,” he asserts.

And with clear economic and environmental rewards and the technology to make it happen, the future, it would seem, is green.