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Hotel Council Aotearoa has released results from the first ever comprehensive survey of hotel sector power usage in New Zealand.
The hotel sector’s longstanding annual operating survey was expanded last year to include targeted questions on energy usage, water usage and recycling. New survey questions were designed collaboratively by HCA, Fresh Info and EECA, a government agency tasked with mobilising New Zealanders to be world leaders in clean and clever energy use.
The initiative was championed by the Hotel Industry Sustainability Group – an industry group collaborating on sector sustainability issues, led by Kanika Jhunjhnuwala of Hind Management and Sudima Hotels and Richard Hayman of Scenic Hotels.
134 of New Zealand’s 360-plus hotels participated in the survey, comprising more than 50 per cent of New Zealand’s hotel room supply.
They were asked to disclose 2023 annual amounts of electricity purchased from the grid, electricity generated onsite, natural gas, stationary diesel, LPG, coal, and consumption of other stationary fuels. In addition, hotels provided details of annual water usage, waste volume to landfill and waste diverted to landfill.
“It’s a well-known maxim that you can’t improve what you don’t measure”, says HCA strategic director James Doolan.
“The hotel industry has a long history of being data driven. We wanted to take the first steps to building a repository of real-world data on energy usage that hotels in Aotearoa can measure themselves against. Better information will lead to smarter capital investment and ultimately to faster decarbonisation.
“One of our goals is to build on this great start and drive even higher levels of industry participation in the energy use survey, especially among smaller independent hotels,” says James. “Many hotels talk a good game on environmental sustainability, but we know that the next generation of travellers will demand real-world data and verification when businesses make claims around sustainability.”
“New Zealand markets itself as a green tourist destination and this is the first step to verifying that claim in the hotel industry in New Zealand,” says Kanika.
