The role of hotels in shaping a sustainable built environment

Because of its function and nature, tourism sector has the potential to shape cities and citizens. The impact of tourism activities on global CO2 is around 5% and its reduction is both a technically achievable and a socially beneficial tar¬get. For instance, in the hotel sector on one side the use of energy efficiency measures and renewable energy is far below its real potential; on the other side, due to the number of guests they host, hotels have the potential to act as an example of energy responsibility for other industries, as well as for individ¬uals. At the European level, the issue of reducing hotels’ energy consumption goes along with the aggressive goals set for the next decades for energy use reduction. In this framework, this paper presents the application of the Europe-wide known cost-optimal methodology to an existing hotel. Indeed, taking into account financial aspects is crucial for the market uptake of sustainable good practices in real, business-driven world. A small-medium mountain hotel lo¬cated nearby Torino was selected as baseline model for the analysis and a number of energy efficiency measures were defined and implemented in a building energy simulation software. The obtained cost-optimal level of energy performance proved that proper combinations of existing technolo¬gies could lead to significant reduction of energy use. However, a critical dis¬cussion of the implemented methodology led to the proposal of different eval-uation parameters for cost-optimal levels of energy performance for hotels, as a possible solution to catch stakeholders’ interest toward green investments.