Technology is a valuable tool for hoteliers who wish to optimize facility management, increase cost savings, and improve guest satisfaction. Telkonet Inc, (OTCQB:TKOI), (the “Company” or “Telkonet”), IoT innovator and US-listed company that offers Energy Management Solutions to the occupancy-based building controls market, as part of its first report “Hospitality 2023: Green Technologies in Hotels,” conducted an international survey involving 200 Hotels and 122 suppliers and consultants, taking a snapshot of their level of technology. The data helps bring into focus the emerging hospitality paradigm.
Responses to the survey’s first question clearly indicate the top reasons hoteliers invest in technology. The main driver of new hotel technology is to enhance the guest experience, according to 82% of respondents. It is followed by energy savings per 80% of respondents. In the hospitality industry, “green technologies” support hoteliers in saving energy and optimizing operational processes.  Considering that green tech solutions can reduce energy consumption by 20-40%, they are useful tools for hoteliers who can recoup their investment typically within 2-3 years
Green tech for optimization and sustainability
The key word that emerges from the survey is “optimization”:  including optimizing energy consumption, optimizing resources, and optimizing staff time. EMS and GRMS systems offer all of these. To date, about 60% of respondents consider themselves satisfied with their hotel’s technology infrastructure, and about 34% of respondents would like to increase the level further. From a broader perspective, immediately following initiatives to reduce pollution, it is technology that makes a hotel sustainable (71%).
“We want to create awareness about good use of technology capable of improving the relationship between people and their environment, said Piercarlo Gramaglia, CEO of Telkonet. “We are facing a time of change: on the one hand the urgency of having consumption under control, on the other the Glasgow Pact and the goal of climate neutrality by 2050. The world is changing as well as travelers, who are now increasingly responsible, a trend that is the child of a post-pandemic era and Generation Z coming into its own. And that’s why as a market leader, alongside the work of monitoring the technological level of facilities, we have started a travel narrative with the Bright Journey project, to describe how sustainability in hotels also passes through the use of technology and to make the hotels themselves become a smart destination,” Gramaglia adds.
Most-used green-tech solutions:
The Telkonet survey identifies the top three technology solutions preferred by hoteliers to meet the preeminent goals of energy savings and guest satisfaction. For 75% of respondents, a Property Management System (PMS) is the most popular tool, because it enables centralized management of reservations and the entire guest stay from a single platform. Right behind are Energy Management Systems (EMS) at 55% and Room Management Solutions (GRMS) at 27%, which guests find in the form of wall plates and thermostats that can control temperature and lights. Both solutions use intelligent measures based on room occupancy by activating or deactivating their functions based on guest presence.
The pitfalls of tech perceived by hoteliers
While green tech solutions are highly valued by hoteliers because it allows them to manage consumption based on room occupancy, building exposure, and outdoor humidity, operational pitfalls emerge in the survey that discourages their use. These include the difficulty of integration between different technological solutions (66%) and the maintenance of equipment because it cannot be managed in-house (53%).
