How Hoteliers can save up to 20% in energy costs by leveraging IoT-based Predictive Maintenance?

One of the most difficult challenges that hoteliers have faced is maintaining an optimal level of guest comfort while reducing operating costs. Maintenance is a major contributor to this cost. While there are numerous articles on reactive maintenance, there’s certainly a lack of focus on proactive measures like IoT-based Predictive Maintenance. Keeping the comfort and experience of guests seamless should be the top priority for any hotel business. At the same time, maintenance should go unnoticed by the guests.

“Predictive Maintenance: Don’t start today by doing yesterday’s work” – Deniece Schofield

The introduction of IoT-based BMS solutions enables predictive maintenance, i.e. proactively maintaining hotel property assets before they completely break down. It leads to maximum uptime and efficient operation of assets resulting in enhanced guest comfort, increased hotel aesthetic value, reduced system & equipment failures, and so forth.

The most difficult challenge with traditional building maintenance is that it is reactive in nature, i.e. it occurs after any equipment or asset has failed. You have no way of knowing whether or not an asset has been properly maintained. It only comes as a surprise when it finally fails. It’s nearly impossible to pinpoint which pieces of equipment aren’t working properly, especially in a large setting. As a result, rather than actively working to prevent problems, the system is forced to react to them as they arise.

What does IoT-based Predictive Maintenance mean for the hospitality industry?

Predictive maintenance is one of the most imperative features of an IoT-based building management system. It utilizes smart sensors to collect real-time asset health data like temperature, pressure, vibration, rotation speeds, current, etc. It then conducts cloud-based AI/ML data analytics to detect irregularities in operations and possible defects in equipment & processes to fix them before they fail. It’s a better approach as it prevents problems instead of conducting maintenance at a fixed time or when an issue arises.

Real use case instances include:

• Increased temperatures can cause components to melt or burn. Depending on the type of equipment, it may need a solution before it causes significant damage.
• Conducting vibration analysis can offer insights into possible breakdowns if the increased vibrations are constantly occurring as it can be a sign of component failure.
• Monitoring current and voltage unbalance of motors.
• Monitoring delta temperature of the cooling tower. If it’s low, trigger an alert.
• Monitoring delta temperature of condenser water in chiller to its optimum temperature.
• Energy and temperature/humidity monitoring of deep freezers in the cold rooms and walk-in chambers, to analyze the health of the compressor.

Investing in predictive maintenance is worth it as it brings significant value to the hotel business. Let’s look at it in terms of what benefits it delivers:

Benefits of predictive maintenance

1. Significant Cost-Cutting and Better Budgeting

One of the major benefits of predictive maintenance is that it helps hotel businesses improve and streamline their budgeting process. It allows you to plan for potential future expenses, while also ensuring that your assets are running at optimal levels. While costs associated with reactive maintenance are often unexpected, predictive maintenance allows you to anticipate potential problems before they occur, resulting in significant cost-cutting measures once care is taken to avoid severe damage.

2. Increases Maintenance Staff Productivity and Efficiency

The predictive maintenance feature of IoT-based smart building solutions automates many of your maintenance processes and helps you to get more work done with fewer people. It can enable your staff to receive their maintenance checklist and tasks on the go via smartphones. This automation aids them in being more organized & efficient allowing them to concentrate on the most critical tasks. Moreover, with the help of IoT, you can track all asset data in real-time, reducing the need for manual updates & paperwork.

3. Reduced guest complaints

By virtue of predictive maintenance, you’ll be able to identify potential problems with your systems before they become major problems that can disrupt your guests’ experience. For instance, it can raise a ticket if a room is not cooling or heating properly, or if the fan or AC is noisy. It will enable the maintenance staff to take corrective measures before guests complain.

That’s why, rather than waiting for a critical asset to completely break down, it’s better to have a proactive approach via smart building management solutions to gain visibility and control over mission-critical building assets and equipment such as HVAC, lighting, refrigeration units, etc. ensuring maximum uptime of all critical systems. This can result in relaxing and enjoyable guest experiences, increasing satisfaction, positive reviews, and the likelihood of future reservations.

4. Ensures Compliance

The predictive maintenance process is a regular schedule of inspection and repair, based on a pre-set program, which will ensure the effective working condition of the equipment being monitored. It ensures that hotel premises are kept in good condition, reducing accidents and the risk of injury. This makes sure that all of your facility is compliant with hospitality legislation, which requires that your entire premises are safe, and all systems are working correctly and securely.

The very core of hospitality is providing a great guest experience, so it should also be central to your hotel operations. This will result in guests talking positively about your hotel, especially in online reviews, and returning as loyal customers. A great guest experience is the result of a smooth & disruption-free stay of the guests. IoT-based BMS offers predictive maintenance to ensure that there are no surprises to you and your guests in terms of disruption in services because of any sudden equipment failure.

An end-to-end IoT-based building management system like Zenconnect offers an intelligent software platform to ingest, transform, and visualize the data. This also includes the ability to link sensors to various assets & equipment, set alerts, and build customized reports.

Check out how a leading Indian hotel operator reduced up to 20% of energy expenditure, improved guest comfort by up to 25%, and gained central visibility into all asset operations using ZenConnect: https://info.zenatix.com/web-hotels-case-study