Refining energy management technology to help reduce usage and expenses will always be a priority for the hospitality industry, and the impetus is especially strong given the surge in North American energy costs. The increase has been about 20 percent over the last five years or so, and the latest year-over-year increase is trending at 3.5 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration as of February 2025. “While a lower increase than in the past, hoteliers can always expect energy costs to continue to rise,” said Jeff Johns, global VP of EMS Business Development at Nomadix, an ASSA ABLOY company.
And there are exceptions to the relatively low overall increase. “Some regional markets, such as in California, continue to have higher rates and experience higher annual increases,” he added. “Wildfire mitigation costs are being passed along to all customers, and currently areas like San Diego reflect a 9 percent annual increase.” And in the Northeast, “New York City is facing an 11.5 percent increase in energy costs on top of Local Law 97 mandates—a double whammy, Massachusetts a 15 percent to 30 percent increase,” noted Yani Deros, CEO/co-founder, CIRQ+.
Guest expectations are also driving the improvement and implementation of energy management technology. A 2023 Booking.com Sustainable Travel Report found that 76 percent of global travelers indicated a higher likelihood of booking a hotel with a green certification, and energy management systems (EMSs) help a hotel attain such certifications. The same report indicated that 43 percent of travelers expressed a willingness to pay more for hotels that prioritized sustainability. “This report highlights not only the potential energy savings and ROI for a property but also the value proposition to market these initiatives to green-conscious travelers,” said Johns.
EMS Advances in Recent Years
While guestroom EMSs vary in complexity, thermostats remain the core component because they directly control the HVAC system. “HVAC accounts for the vast majority of electrical energy usage in guestrooms—especially today, with lighting largely powered by energy-efficient LEDs,” said Andrew Cao, director of technology and product portfolio at Verdant by Copeland. And increasingly, wireless thermostats have become predominant in hotels, leveraging existing WiFi networks. Hotels are beginning to embrace smart lighting as well. “They choose switches that cost between $40 to $80 each, but we have the ability to turn any switch into a smart switch with a simple and economical retrofit,” noted Deros.
Another major advance is the integration of the EMS with the hotel’s PMS (property management system). “Guestroom energy management—based on occupancy and managing rooms through PMS integration—saves energy costs on unrented rooms and automatically adjusting based on check-ins/outs,” said Johns. “In the past five years, the focus has been on reducing on-premises equipment and separate networking, making PMS integration more affordable and attainable for more properties.”
EMS solutions are also shifting to cloud-based platforms, which enables “more effective ‘above property’ visibility for asset owners, operators, and brands,” Johns added. “Nomadix is introducing a cloud-native solution that leverages a WiFi thermostat and eliminates the need for an on-premises server and separate RF [radio frequency] networking that have been used for years. The benefit to hoteliers is to lower the capital cost of connecting to the PMS … and reduce the skill requirements of on-premises staff to manage extra equipment or separate networking.”
Guestroom energy management is of course crucial, but an EMS can also be enhanced to enable control of common areas. Honeywell’s INNCOM paired with Remote Building Manager is a prime example. “We don’t limit ourselves just to the guestrooms,” said Neha Jaitpal, global general manager for Honeywell Building Automation’s hospitality business. “Remote Building Manager provides control, scheduling, and visibility into common spaces. Powered by Honeywell Forge, this connected solution is designed for the entire hotel.” Some EMSs have also expanded their functionality beyond energy management to, for example, supporting guest wellness. “We’ve released our AQS air quality tracking module that’s integrated into our LUXE system,” said Deros.
Meeting Hoteliers Where They Are
EMS developers are increasingly accommodating hoteliers’ needs in various ways, as opposed to trying to create one-size-fits-all products. Vingcard’s system is a case in point. “Vingcard provides the industry with guestroom technologies that are purpose-built to match the goals of an owner, operator, or brand,” said Johns. “By this approach, Vingcard Energy Solutions can offer the best technologies to match needs of the hotelier and guest. Through the many technologies available, these systems can integrate to more solutions beyond guestroom EMS and provide efficiency that will continue to grow and provide an ecosystem for better operations and improved NOI [net operating income] for hoteliers.”
In addition to a flexible and integrable EMS, some hoteliers look for a system that’s easy and cost-effective to install, avoiding major renovations that disrupt operations and staying within budget. “The biggest hurdles hoteliers face today is capital expenditures. … Recognizing this challenge in the energy management space, we launched ECOSENSE AI late last year, the industry’s first Smart Room-as-a-Subscription (SRaaS) that requires zero capex, zero integration,” said Deros. “Our unified platform delivers advanced occupancy sensors, intelligent HVAC controls, and smart lighting without requiring upfront capital investment. Our retrofit approach involves pre-configured and bundled equipment, from HVAC controls, smart lighting systems, door sensors, advanced occupancy detection, and environmental monitoring devices. This plug-n-play methodology enables installs in 60 minutes or less with no downtime and no hardwiring.”
Another retrofit-friendly system is Verdant. “Our system is built around a proprietary mesh network that connects through a single Internet source and then propagates throughout the building via our thermostats,” Cao explained. “You can have an actively running hotel and deploy the thermostats without any interruptions. It takes 5-10 minutes per room to get it installed and running.”
Recently, Honeywell has been catering to the energy management needs of mid-market hotels specifically. “According to Lodging Econometrics, 63 percent of total projects in the United States is projected to come from limited-service new construction. … And limited-service hotels don’t have a building management system like the larger hotels,” explained Jaitpal. “So, with our new INNCOM Direct EMS solution, we created a scaled-down alternative with the same system functionality, including cloud-based monitoring and analytics, for the mid-market.”
Further Progress
While EMSs have become quite sophisticated as well as convenient to install and operate, there is always room for enhancement with any technology. One frontier is the integration of hotel EMSs with demand response signals that are based on local power grid conditions. “Demand-based pricing is a big influence on the electricity bills in many different regions today, and we’re looking into putting in systems that actively manage that,” said Cao. “Today, utility companies give a lot of incentives toward helping curtail these loads. So, that is a situation where a lot of utilities are starting to shift to a more ‘hotelier friendly’ method of doing demand response, which is ‘Shed what you can, and we will incentivize you on what you shed.’”
AI is also enhancing the functionality of EMSs, particularly when it comes to analyzing energy usage in a more granular way and making recommendations based on that data. “Most recently, we’ve added an AI model into the energy-efficiency portion of our device, living in the thermostat itself,” said Cao. “AI will definitely allow us to go beyond what we do today, which is giving property-wide settings and recommendations. AI will also give us the possibility of room-specific recommendations.” Johns also cited this advance in EMS analytics: “With cloud logic and predictive analytics, it is possible to provide EMS strategies on a room-by-room basis and new solutions can be more quickly implemented,” he said.
Deros envisions expanding Adaptive AI analytics beyond the guestroom to encompass broader factors that impact hotel energy management, such as weather and building environments. “Seventy-six percent of the building’s energy load is based on thermal rays, and understanding this relationship is critical,” he explained. “We’re working with groups in Las Vegas, and we’ve shown that because their buildings are so large and covered in glass, two-thirds of their rooms are facing the sun beating down on their rooms through the day. And without the proper controls, this condition places enormous stress on the HVAC system, driving up energy consumption. That’s why you need energy intelligence that goes beyond basic occupancy status. This is the new frontier CIRQ+ is activating in hospitality energy management.”
TECH INSIGHTS
Bird’s-Eye View: Energy Oversight Across Properties and Portfolios
Centralized tracking is a key feature of many hotel operations platforms, and EMSs are offering more detailed property-wide views of energy performance. For example, among the advantages of Nomadix’s cloud-native solution is superior above-property visibility, via an energy management dashboard that “provides not only a monitoring of the savings but also includes the tracking of system activity for specific rooms,” said Jeff Johns, global VP of EMS Business Development at Nomadix, an ASSA ABLOY company. And these dashboards are poised to become even more powerful via cloud computing, he added. “While there are many ways to reflect the energy savings monitoring in a property, it often takes several variables (e.g., weather, occupancy, utility statements, energy usage) to provide a meaningful analysis of energy usage and savings of a system. The future of dashboards from Vingcard and Nomadix will focus on leveraging the cloud computing power to provide more meaningful reporting and integration to systems used by hoteliers for using the data in critical business decisions and reporting.”
Today’s EMSs also position managers to track energy performance across multiple properties. Verdant, for example, “is built for portfolios, so you would be able to log into a single portal on the cloud that allows you to see a performance aggregate for all of your properties,” said Andrew Cao, director of technology and product portfolio at Verdant by Copeland. “And based upon their average runtimes and your energy management settings profiles that are set to those thermostats, we create an estimation of how much our system is saving compared to no energy management whatsoever, and we extrapolate that to cost savings.”
