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Ventilation, lighting and air conditioning of a hotel can be controlled by technology
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Earlier, rooms and vast areas such as the banquet hall and other public areas would be chilled and lit even though they were empty for large parts of the day.

BMS enables a single employee of a hotel to sit in one room – instead of running around from room to room and floor to floor - to track and monitor where electricity and air conditioning are required in a hotel and where it is not functioning properly. 

Energy is automatically switched on and off on depending on when it is required.

When a guest leaves a room, the lighting and air conditioning are instantly turned off. When the guest inserts the key-card in the door, everything comes on. 

Similarly, sensors and thermostats can detect when a guest is in the room. If there is no movement in the room for a certain amount of time, the air conditioner will shut off or decrease to save energy. When the guest re-enters the room, hidden infrared devices turn the AC back on.

 If a hotel has, say, 10 per cent occupancy, only the occupied 10 per cent will be chilled. Such systems may not be cheap but most hotel managers believe they can recover their investment within 12-20 months.

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“BMS is very important to reduce energy consumption because it allows a hotel to track, monitor and control where cooling, heating and lighting are needed.

 It will automatically turn on to cool a meeting room one hour before the start of a function and to automatically shut down 45 minutes afterwards,” said Harinakshi Nair, senior associate, HVS Eco Services in Mumbai. 

Marutha Vanan, in charge of customer care at Voltas which is one of the companies that supplies BMS, says the system is user-friendly and can cut energy costs by 20-30%. 

“It’s all visible on the computer in one single control centre - which areas of a hotel are being heated or cooled and which aren’t. With the flick of a switch, you can turn equipment on or off sitting 10 floors away,” said Vanan.  

Apart from the current zeitgeist, pressure from consumers, the abundant logic of green policies and competition from eco-friendly hotels, the Indian government is also nudging the hotel industry to install green technology systems. 

It has specified that any hotel or building with more than 50-100 employees must have its own Sewage Treatment Plant and BMS.  

Furthermore, 20% of a hotel’s hot water requirement must be met by solar power and if a hotel invests in, say, wind generation anywhere in the country and those windmills supply power to the national grid, the hotel can get the same number of units free, wherever it is located. 

“The Department of Tourism is being pretty ruthless and getting tough. To get its star classification, a hotel has to have certain processes and technology in place,” said Amjad Hussain, environment officer, Rain Tree Hotel, in Chennai. 

To encourage change, the government recently recognised The Leela Palace Kempinski Bangalore as the ‘best eco-friendly, five star deluxe hotel’ in the country. 

Other eco-hotels such as Orchid and Lotus Suites in Mumbai have been trailblazers, pioneering change long before customers and social pressure forced other groups to follow suit. Orchid, for instance, installed an STL tank 10 years ago. Rodas Hotel, also in Mumbai, is similarly in the vanguard.  

All three hotels follow the philosophy of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ passionately. “While we are determined to follow green practices from top to bottom, none of our measures in any way affects the comfort of our guests. There is no conflict between the two,” said Akshay Gavai, Environmental Officer at Orchid. 

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