Energy use and margins in hotels

The margin is there, and energy takes an avoidable slice of it

Among the sectors we work in, hospitality has the highest gross operating margin: 24.2 per cent of revenue, according to ISTAT’s Risultati economici delle imprese 2023, accommodation division. That is a comfortable starting position, and it is why energy in a hotel is rarely treated as an emergency.

The problem is that hospitality is also one of the most energy-intensive sectors per square metre, and that its consumption concentrates in three end uses that all respond to hourly control.

Indicator	Value	Source
Gross operating margin on revenue	24.2%	ISTAT, accommodation, 2023
Specific electricity use, medium-large hotels	156-204 kWh/m² per year	ENEA, 92 mandatory audits
Average annual bill per property	120,000 euros	Federalberghi, 2022 estimate

The spending figure needs one qualification, because it is the one quoted most often and most carelessly: the Federalberghi release is from 2022, at the height of the price crisis. Read it as a reminder of how far the bill can move, not as a current cost.

Where the electricity goes

The breakdown by end use comes from ENEA’s Quaderni dell’Efficienza Energetica, 2024 edition, built on 92 mandatory energy audits. The values below refer to climate zones D and E, which cover much of the Italian hotel stock.

End use	kWh/m² per year	Standard deviation
Lighting and electrical equipment	80	± 39
Summer cooling	45	± 22
Auxiliaries and air handling units	31	± 18

The standard deviations are stated by the source and they are large: the spread between properties is wide, and an average value describes no hotel in particular. Use it to grasp the relative size of the three end uses, not to judge your own property.

Size changes everything

This is the most common mistake when comparing a hotel against a sector benchmark, and it is worth isolating.

Population	Zone C	Zone D	Zone E	Zone F
Medium-large hotels	—	204 / 156	190 / 144	69
Small and medium hotel businesses	85	74	66	44

Values in electrical kWh/m² per year. For medium-large hotels the two numbers in each cell are the two floor-area bands surveyed: 3,500-7,300 m² first, 7,301-31,500 m² second.

Between the two populations there is a factor of two or three. A forty-room three-star hotel belongs on the small-business row, not the large-property one: on the wrong row you conclude you consume almost nothing when you are in fact average, or the other way round. The medium-large figures come from the 92 mandatory audits, the small-business figures from a 2025 ENEA survey of 328 questionnaires: they are two different surveys, and the gap between the rows reflects that too.

What a euro of saved energy is worth

On a gross operating margin of 24.2 per cent, every euro of energy saved is worth roughly 4 euros of additional revenue. The saving carries no associated variable costs: it is not revenue to be produced, it is spending that stops going out.

The multiplier is far lower than in food retail, where it is above thirty, and the reason is exactly what makes hospitality comfortable: the margin is higher. A low multiplier does not mean the saving matters little, it means you are starting from a better place.

What can be controlled

An empty room conditioned at full setpoint is pure cost. In a hotel, occupancy changes every day, but the systems often do not. It is the same condition we find in residential care facilities, where control based on real occupancy is the highest-impact intervention.

Control on real occupancy. The system recognises which spaces are free and modulates setpoints and switching, restoring comfort ahead of the guest’s return. It is the intervention worth the most, because a large share of cooling and heating is spent on temporarily empty spaces.

Setpoints anticipated on the weather. Air handling units, chillers and boilers run on a setpoint recalculated hour by hour from the forecast. Anticipating the load lowers production peaks, and the peaks are where the largest share of energy sits.

Domestic hot water. Hourly modulation on the zero-demand windows, within anti-legionella requirements. In hotels, hot water is a leading line item, far more than in retail.

Installation without a building site. Wireless sensors: no cable to pull, no preparatory work, no plant to shut down. For a property that cannot take rooms out of service, that is the condition that makes the project possible.

The term of comparison

For hospitality we do not yet have a publishable full-year record. We do have one for residential care, and the plant layout is similar: rooms, air handling units, domestic hot water, a canteen.

Reference result	Value	How it is measured
Annual saving, two care facilities	−35%	IPMVP Option C, 12 months, normalised
Peak in the winter period	−58%	measured, January-February
Avoided cost over 12 months	239,000 euros	actuals, two facilities

Read it for what it is: a term of comparison from an adjacent sector, not a forecast. Every property is its own case, and the facilities these numbers come from are not identified.

The difference, in a hotel as anywhere else, is not the sensor. It is that you anticipate the forecast load instead of chasing the current temperature, hour by hour, across every system.