Home Guest Columns The Role of Enterprise Asset Management in Measuring Energy Consumption

The Role of Enterprise Asset Management in Measuring Energy Consumption

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For the hospitality industry, managing the infrastructure of buildings, facilities and equipment is critical to the operational success of the hotel. At the same time, the hotel must comply with strict quality and safety guidelines, along with the many service level standards to meet the needs of their most valuable assets—their guests.

A property can easily focus on top-line growth for revenue management, distribution strategies and creating profitability via customer loyalty, but sustainability is intrinsically difficult to quantify. And, even though sustainability typically touches nearly all aspects of hotel enterprise ownership and management, aligning environmental, social and financial factors to promote responsible business operations over time can be daunting for staff who are relatively new to the concepts.

However, despite the lack of clear, universally accepted metrics, there is a noticeable shift toward sustainability that is well underway, with momentum demonstrated by a growing number of sustainability programs and initiatives. These programs and initiatives have risen both internally in the hospitality industry, via hotel owners, managers and operators, and externally in the environmental community.

Why Green? Why Now?

Sustainability practices in hospitality have been in play for the last 50 years, when hoteliers realized they could provide an enhanced guest experience by integrating natural elements into the resort experience, such as picking up towels on a less frequent basis at the request of the guest. In fact, many guests inquire about green practices and select properties because of their commitment to the environment.

As we enter into the last half of 2013, key drivers for sustainability and green initiatives for hotels continue to include a variety of issues:

•    Summits and world leaders are encouraging nations to adopt stricter CO2 emission reduction guidelines.
•    Governments and local authorities continue to provide tax incentives for companies to be more self-sustainable.
•    LEED certification, an internationally recognized green building certification system, is an attractive quality for many property owners and guests, ensuring that buildings are self-sustainable.
•    Partnership arrangements between hotels and various organizations promoting sustainability have many properties giving their green initiatives and strategies a second look.
•    The unpredictable economy and increasing competition in the market has led many hotels to take a deeper look into sustainable cost cutting measures, bringing the topic of going green back to the forefront of discussions.

Technology is Key

Hotel companies are looking for new ways to get green and implement sustainable strategies, yet be smart about these decisions that directly impact profitability. Technology is key to helping executives unlock potential savings and identify wasteful practices.

For example, one of the largest expenses for a hotel is the energy consumption for HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning). With the right monitoring tools and technology in place, hotels can save significantly on energy consumption and boost sustainability. To combat this, hotels need a specialized enterprise asset management (EAM) solution that can help them understand and effectively manage all facilities, equipment, and energy costs—a solution that will help exceed their guests’ expectations. In fact, a reliable EAM system facilitates asset sustainability by allowing properties to incorporate the consumption, costs and environmental impact of natural resources—water, air, gas, electricity, and steam—into their asset management strategy to reduce costs and help achieve Energy Star standards.

A hospitality-specific EAM system enables properties to monitor and measure energy consumption, and compare those numbers to estimates for the building type to apply and obtain the Energy Star rating certificate and symbol. By using this green certification as a marketing tool, you can promote your brand as environmentally friendly, attracting new guests and satisfying existing guests.

Going Mobile to Reduce Paper Use

Aside from monitoring the HVAC, going mobile at a property helps to reduce the use of paper, and eliminates old-fashioned, manual registration desk processes. This enables hotel team members to “meet and greet” their guests at any location, improving the personalization of the check-in experience and reducing the costs associated with static reception desks and all multiple pieces of technology at each location.

Managing properties in an environmentally responsible way is key to standing out in the industry, and it’s important to partner with an organization that can not only help lead you down the right path, but be there to support you as needs for the property and environment evolve and change.

Bernard Ellis, CHTP, CRME, is vice president of Industry Strategy, Hospitality, for Infor Hospitality. Ellis is responsible for defining the go-to-market strategy of the entire Infor product suite for the hospitality industry vertical, including product positioning, messaging and partner relationships. Ellis also directly oversees product management of hospitality-specific solutions. Prior to Infor, Ellis held executive positions with IDeaS, a SAS Company, SynXis, now part of Sabre Hospitality, and Micros-Fidelio.

Infor Hospitality software systems deliver multi-departmental hotel management software that touch every area of a business, whether it’s the financial and asset team; central reservations or corporate office; on-property operations; sales, marketing, and loyalty team; maintenance group; or coordinators of labor and staffing schedules. Infor Hospitality’s management solutions connect hospitality-specific strategy and plans to front- and back-office systems. Infor Hospitality offers hotel financial management software, food and beverage management software, hotel property management software, central reservations, gaming management, and other systems.

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