Eco Friendly
Creating an eco-friendly boutique accommodation is important to guest comfort and also important to profit. Everyone wins if you can make a comfortable room, and keep the cost of operation of the accommodation down. You benefit as an owner as you do not have to charge more to the customer for the same amenities list. This gives your boutique accommodation the high ground as an eco-friendly operation by using the most eco-friendly resources available to you and you can control your operating costs. A good thing to remember is a dollar out is equal to 3 or more dollars in for most luxury accommodation. One of the biggest issues in Asia is the electric bill, if you can keep that down you can discount rooms during non-peak seasons and still make a good profit, but if your rooms are wasting a lot of energy then you are just burning cash and customers! The best way to think of eco is green, the color of money!
The first issue is get the best air con and heating unit that you can, what is the most economical to run. Most air conditioners and heaters will be in the room for 10 years or more before you will need to replace them. You can count on the price of electric to go up during that time, so it makes a lot of sense to pay extra, as much as it hurts in the startup phase, to get the most economical unit that you can.
Eco Friendly is economy friendly as well. A great place to save money that takes very little upfront cash is weather-stripping and plugging holes. Most new construction and old construction as well, are not very tight. A crack that runs for 3 feet under a door is like having a hole in the wall the size of a coaster or bigger. In cold areas it is easy to find the wool strips in a hardware store, in the tropic’s not so easy to find, but worth the search. You can also just tape the bottom of the door so that the tape runs flush with floor. Remember that cold air sinks, so if the air can get out, the room will never fill up with the cooler air and the air con unit will run constantly. A great test is have the air off for 20 min if the room is still comfortable that means the room is holding some of the cool, if you can leave the room for two hours and you come back and it is still cool you have a room that is very affordable to keep comfortable, which is good for you and the guest.
Another place that you can save a lot of energy in hotel rooms is the refrigerator. You have two things happening here the fridge is cooling the contents as well as heating the room, which is fighting the air con so having a well-insulated fridge that is holding the cool is twice as important. Many of the mini units are terrible energy wasters! It might be cheaper to run a full size unit! The mini fridge like big units need to circulate air inside, so if they are over full they are not efficient, the stuff inside is not cool, and the unit is running constantly.
