How much does your hotel lose on HVAC in empty rooms?

The invisible problem draining your budget

HVAC accounts for 40% to 60% of a hotel's energy consumption. And a significant portion of that spend is wasted on rooms where nobody is present.

The numbers hoteliers don't see

Consider a 50-room hotel with an average occupancy rate of 70%. That means at any given time, about 15 rooms are empty. If the HVAC system keeps running in those rooms, the hotel is paying to heat or cool air nobody enjoys.

The real cost:

• A room's AC unit consumes between 1.5 and 3 kWh
• At 0.15 EUR/kWh, each empty room with the AC running costs between 0.22 and 0.45 EUR per hour
• With 15 empty rooms over 8 hours daily: between 26 and 54 EUR wasted per day
• Annually: between 9,500 and 19,700 EUR thrown away on energy

Why it happens

The problem isn't negligence. Hotels operate with systems that aren't designed to respond to real occupancy:

1. Thermostats are manual: Guests leave the AC on when they go out. Nobody turns it off until housekeeping enters.
2. No visibility: Front desk doesn't know which rooms are physically occupied vs. which have an active booking but the guest stepped out.
3. Centralized systems don't distinguish: Central HVAC cools or heats entire zones regardless of whether anyone is there.

The solution: automation based on real occupancy

With occupancy sensors and smart automation, HVAC turns off automatically when the guest leaves and turns on before they return. Without sacrificing comfort.

Hotels implementing this type of automation report savings between 20% and 35% on their energy bill.

Conclusion

Energy waste in empty rooms isn't a minor issue. For a mid-sized hotel, it can represent between 10,000 and 20,000 EUR per year. The good news is that the technology to fix it already exists and doesn't require replacing your hotel's entire infrastructure.