First Sri Lanka hotel energy and water consumption study completed

Sri Lanka’s first ever benchmark study for energy and water consumption in the Sri Lankan Hotel Industry came to a close last year, and the results have been compiled and reported.

Sri Lanka’s first ever benchmark study for energy and water consumption in the Sri Lankan Hotel Industry came to a close last year, and the results have been compiled and reported.

The EU SWITCH – ASIA Greening Sri Lanka Hotels Project commenced in November 2009, and completed 4 years of active involvement with tourist hotels in the country, and had over 350 hotels registered with the project. Numerous Awareness Seminars on Sustainable Consumption Practices, Training workshops on resource management for hotel technical staff, audits for water, waste and energy, and detailed energy audits and cleaner production audits, at the request of the participating hotels was conducted.

Working with a sample set of 90 hotels, who were submitting comprehensive data on energy and water, the project undertook a study to establish benchmarks for the industry.

The basis was to calculate the benchmarks using the 2012 national industry average occupancy of 77%, as reported by the SLTDA. The monthly consumption of energy and water per occupied room night was calculated for each hotel, and plotted against the percentage occupancy. From these curves, the specific consumption for 77% occupancy was derived for each hotel, to be used in the benchmarking exercise.

These specific consumption figures were statistically analyzed by fitting the data into a log normal curve, from which the benchmarks were established.

It also became obvious that the benchmarks should be established for different types of hotels, for it to be of benefit to the hoteliers. Several different ways of classifying the sample set of 90 hotels was considered, and it was felt that the most useful benchmark was based on the SLTDA classifications scheme for tourist accommodation. Hotels engaged with the project, but not registered with the SLTDA were classified as “not registered.” Almost all these were SMEs.

The results were as follows:

5-star hotel
1.26 cubic meters of water per room night
96.5 kWh of energy per room night

4-star hotel
0.85 cubic meters of water per room night
47.8 kWh of energy per room night

3-star hotel
0.86 cubic meters of water per room night
33.2 kWh of energy per room night

2-star hotel
0.71 cubic meters of water per room night
21.9 kWh of energy per room night

1-star hotel
0.18 cubic meters of water per room night
12.7 kWh of energy per room night

Boutique hotel
1.05 cubic meters of water per room night
69.4 kWh of energy per room night

Supplementary
0.28 cubic meters of water per room night
5.8 kWh of energy per room night

Non-registered
0.33 cubic meters of water per room night
3.0 kWh of energy per room night

These benchmarks can be used by the hotels in the respective categories (whose energy and water consumption is higher) as a target to achieved by adopting sustainable consumption practices. Both energy and water consumption benchmarks for 5-star and boutique hotels are higher than for other categories of hotel as expected. On the other hand both 4- and 3-sar hotels show similar benchmarks. This is to be expected since service and facilities in these two categories of hotels are fairly similar. The benchmarks for both water and energy consumption show an increasing trend with increasing level of service and facilities (e.g., boutique hotels).

Given the very weak record keeping discipline among the hoteliers in Sri Lanka, this study is by no means exhaustive; but it is the first time ever that such an analysis has been done. Hence the figures at this juncture should be taken as only indicative, and once the sample set is enlarged to increase the number sampled hotels, and also when reliable data is available from the hotels, a more accurate Industry Average could be achieved.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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