The amount of energy usage in a hotel depends on the number of bedrooms and the on-site facilities. How much electricity and gas a hotel is using will also vary depending on the time of year. Generally, the majority of energy consumption in a hotel comes from heating and hot water.
A survey of 50 UK hotels conducted by the Department of Environment found that almost 70% of energy usage in a hotel is from heating and hot water. It also found that catering accounts for 12% of energy and lighting account for 8%.
So, the amount of gas a hotel uses is significantly higher than the amount of electricity it uses.
But how do you work out how much energy your hotel uses?
The best way to calculate how much electricity and gas your hotel uses is per bedroom. Once you’ve worked this figure out, you can then multiply it by the number of guest rooms your hotel has. This will allow you to make an estimate of your hotel’s total energy usage.
Small hotels
Small hotels have 25 guest rooms or fewer. The size of each guest room is approximately 60 metres squared. On average, about 300 kWh of gas and 100 kWh of electricity are used each year for each square meter of a room.
This means that an average room in a small hotel uses 18,000 kWh of gas and 6,000 kWh of electricity per year.
These figures can be used to work out how much electricity and gas your hotel uses each month. To do this, divide them by 12 and then multiply the results by the number of rooms in your hotel.
The average amount of gas used by a small hotel in a month is 37,500 kWh. The average amount of monthly electricity usage is 12,500 kWh. Hotel owners also need to take into account any extra facilities they have on-site. The above figures only account for the energy usage of bedrooms.
Large hotels
Large hotels have many more rooms than small hotels and these rooms tend to be slightly larger. This means that their gas and electricity prices will naturally be higher. The average energy usage for a large hotel is 120 kWh per meter squared for electricity and 400 kWh for gas.
If a hotel has 100 rooms, this means that its energy use could be around 80,000 kWh of electricity and 266,000 kWh of gas per month. With the current spike in energy costs, this could see many hotels struggling to pay their energy bills.