Hotels in the UK need to start saving energy right now in order to prepare for increasing energy bills in the future, according to Ecompter, a provider of carbon footprint calculation and sustainability services to many leading hotel and accommodation providers.

“According to data gathered from Ecompter’s customers including, for example, Best Western in Finland, Poland and The Baltic, at present energy prices, the average hotel spends approximately ￡1,000 per room on electricity each year,” explains Ville Valorinta, CEO and Founder of Ecompter. “These costs are set to spiral and put a further squeeze on hotel profits as energy prices continue to increase across the country. That’s why, aside from the obvious environmental benefits, hotels should be thinking right now about their energy consumption levels and encouraging guests to make sustainable choices during their stay. Ecompter offers hotels an online CO2 calculator they can feature online so their guests are encouraged to reduce their energy consumption with useful suggestions about how to do so.”

Ville Continues: “The industry is unique. There are few other service industries where customer choices have such a big environmental impact on their supplier’s ability to implement sustainability initiatives. It’s therefore important for hotels to provide their guests with guidance on how to minimize the environmental impact of their stay – such as choosing to shower rather than having a bath, or remembering to turn the lights and air conditioning off when leaving their rooms.”

Ecompter also suggests that the same principle applies to hotel staff as they can have a great impact on the amount of energy consumed by a hotel. “The simple fact is,” concludes Ville, “hotel policies alone, how ever well intentioned, are not going to bring about kind of changes in energy use needed to cut costs, improve profitability and have a positive effect on the environment. Hotels can only achieve this by working in partnership with their guests and their staff.”

Ecompter offers the first service to be based on the new hotel industry agreed common method for measuring and communicating carbon emissions – the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI – and the first to bridge the gap between hotel sustainably initiatives, staff implementation on the ground and guests’ environmentally motivated energy consumption choices during their stay.