Measuring Success
In the world of hospitality, lighting must accommodate guests as well as the bottom line.
The success of any hotel depends on attention to details. In this highly competitive hospitality business, first impressions are critical. Hotel owners and operators must continually work to distinguish their properties, to create a welcoming environment, to satisfy their guests’ every need and to generate profit, while dealing with the present realities of increasing labor and utility costs.
Success means staying ahead of the competition in meeting and exceeding your guests' expectations. Lighting has a dramatic effect on how your facility is perceived by your guests. Good lighting is a critical component of the profitability equation. The right lighting creates an atmosphere that welcomes guests, enhances their visit and invites them to return – in short, it helps ensure continued revenues. At the same time, smart lighting choices can significantly lower energy consumption and operational costs.
Lighting and Your Bottom Line
It’s critical that hotel owners understand how lighting can have a direct effect on their guests’ satisfaction as well as their own profitability, overhead, energy and disposal/recycling costs.
Hotels are 24/7 operations so even minor increases in operating efficiencies will result in significant savings. Installing or upgrading to more energy efficient, longer life lighting systems will result in reduced energy consumption and fewer lamp replacements. Longer replacement intervals mean less interruption of hotel operations and lower maintenance costs.
Hotel owners concerned about the cost of new lighting systems need to look beyond the initial capital investment and consider the long-term benefits and ROI. Capital investments in lighting systems are small in comparison with RevPAR. Good lighting directly affects guest satisfaction and the contribution they make to your hotel’s annual revenue.
Energy and Sustainability
Managing Your Energy Costs
Reducing operating costs is a challenge in the hospitality industry where hotel owners must satisfy guest’s expectations for comfort and security without lowering quality of service. Guests expect to find all the comforts of home: long hot showers, climate control, well-lit rooms, and round-the-clock amenities, all of which consume energy.
Electricity accounts for the largest portion of a hotel’s annual energy budget. Lighting alone represents almost 25 percent of the total electricity consumed. In fact, lighting accounts for more than 40 percent of the total electric cost for a typical hotel room. With energy costs in the U.S. averaging over $2 per square foot, there’s a tremendous and immediate opportunity for hotel owners to increase net revenue.
Lighting for the Sustainable Hotel
In the face of rising energy costs, many hotels have adopted “green” strategies, implementing energy efficient technologies and processes to save natural resources, reduce waste and protect the earth. Using environmentally preferable lighting solutions can reduce the carbon footprint and impact of your properties.
Lighting Design Goals
Guests begin forming impression about your property as soon as they drive up to the main entrance. A bright inviting entrance canopy, attractive landscape lighting and a well lit parking area immediately puts individuals at ease. The lobby and reception area should invite people and make them feel welcome. Adequate light levels and well placed luminaires help orient guests and enhance their comfort level. Drawing attention to carefully selected floral arrangements, artwork, curios and furnishings enhance their appeals and help make your property a treasure in its own right.
Hospitality spaces often require that a variety of activities take place in the same area. Function rooms are used for banquets, candlelit dinners, dancing, meetings, lectures, trade shows, and conferences. To accommodate these different visual tasks and their varied levels of illuminance and light distribution, several lighting systems are required and must be operated in combination or separately with switching and dimming controls.
Lighting must provide an environment that can relax or energize people as desired, and quite simply “feels good” to the occupants.
Lighting systems must be flexible and adaptable to guests’ specific needs and activities. Inadequate amounts of light cause visual discomfort and in some cases can compromise safety. Lighting should deliver illuminance levels appropriate to the tasks being performed. Too much light can also cause visual discomfort and consumes more energy than required. More detailed information is available in Chapter 28 of the 20th Edition IES Lighting Handbook: Lighting for Hospitality and Entertainment.
Lighting should help promote your brand image. Highlighting unique architectural elements, signage and ID, facades, thoroughfares, etc. will all contribute to presenting a positive corporate image.
