BMS has emerged as a solution to handle the controlling and monitoring in hotels in a more efficient way, thus evolving the industry to an integrated market says Kumar Ramesh
The hotel industry in India has witnessed a tremendous growth in the recent past, with the government too having taken several steps to boost travel and tourism activity.
The industry has always been shaped by changing needs. Guests now expect complete access to the latest trends and technology during their hotel stay. Increased awareness about security and safety, coupled with the aspiration to create world-class properties, has elevated the level of automation in hotels, resulting in increased use of information technologies, sensors, detectors, digital video cameras, access cards, and other systems.
With the increasing use of such standalone systems in a hotel, a Building Management System (BMS), has emerged as a solution to handle controlling and monitoring in a more efficient way, thus making the industry evolve from a standalone product market to an integrated BMS market. Automation for hotels starts with basic standalone systems for different applications, which include:
- Video surveillance system
- Electronic access control system
- Fire detection and suppression
- Lighting controls
- HVAC controls
- Alarm system
- Computer network systems
The majority of the system installations in hotels until early 2006, were simple stand-alone building management systems with limited integration with other functionalities. However, since 2006 there has been a marked increase in the number of modern hotels that use integrated networking, internet protocol (IP) based systems, digital media, and suchlike, to deliver a sophisticated BMS solution or a truly integrated BMS. Advancements in building technology such as IP-based building convergence, enterprise-wide integration, and web services enabled anywhere-anytime monitoring, are creating new opportunities in hotel automation. The use of BMS thus helps to provide safety, comfort, single point operation, speedy response to incidents, save energy, and reduce operational cost.
New technology and engineering systems are primarily used to serve people and be intelligent. Hence, a building management system has, nowadays, become a part of the hotel infrastructure equipped with advanced communication network systems. These integrated technologies have thus become the de-facto choice for many Greenfield and Brownfield modern luxury hotels to achieve seamless integration of complex network and engineering systems, security, heating, alarms, electricity, uninterrupted electricity supply, and IT.
The shift to open integrated systems has improved central monitoring and control, and enabled energy savings with claims of significant reduction in total cost and improved operation and maintenance. Hotels maintain and operate phase accounts for almost 75% of the total lifecycle cost. Installation of an integrated building management system is expected to increase the initial cost by 2-3%, but results in huge savings of close to 40% in the overall operational cost of the building during its entire life cycle. Hence, integration of BMS during the early stages effectively reduces operation and maintenance costs over the lifecycle of the hotel building.
Energy management systems and services have been gaining significance over the last two-to-three years due to rising fuel prices as well as the growing importance of energy savings and efficiency. Energy costs have gone from becoming a mere cost item on a hotel’s account to becoming a critical component to manage, not only from cost perspective but also from that of availability, quality, and utilisation.
Regulatory changes, such as the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) that is expected to become mandatory, are likely to further aid the growth of energy management in hotels. Additionally, the desire to have green buildings as part of their long-term sustainability plans could provide growth opportunities for BMS in hotels.
It is expected that the budget hotel segment will witness huge growth and expansion while the luxury hotel segment will continue to perform well over the next few years. As all hotels focus on energy management, tailor-made BMS solutions are likely to gain prominence. The initiatives taken by various BMS companies towards improving technologies and providing innovative solutions ensure that the demand for hotel specific systems continues to remain attractive, thereby offering huge potential over the next four to five years.
Kumar Ramesh is an industry analyst, Environment and Building Technology Practice,South Asia and Middle East, Frost & Sullivan.
