The hospitality industry has long embraced new energy management solutions (EMS) to improve efficiency while maintaining guest comfort. Smart thermostats, initially designed to monitor only for occupancy, have since evolved to provide even greater savings by integrating with check-in/check-out signals from the PMS.
At its core, the smart thermostat operates on “If This, Then That” (IFTTT) logic–the device contains all of the routines to respond to specific, pre-programmed situations. Despite the wide range of variables and routines required in a typical hotel thermostat, EMS pioneers have produced excellent results, packing a surprising amount of power into these small devices to accommodate dozens of scenarios.
But growing demand for more advanced and predictive features requires thousands more lines of code inside the thermostat, increasing costs and delaying the introduction of new solutions.
Instead of asking these small but mighty devices to do more, the future demands that we move the intelligence to where the power is: in the cloud to leverage unprecedented AI and predictive capabilities.
Cloud Computing Opens New Opportunities
The rapid proliferation of cloud-connected solutions across nearly every other operating system is driving a shift in EMS design. Instead of a smart thermostat that’s limited by its onboard hardware, a cloud-connected thermostat leverages new development techniques, flexible design, and virtually unlimited computational power. Thermostats are becoming more connected and controllable, rather than more inherently powerful.
Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and modern cloud computing enable massive expansion in features, capabilities and data, which hoteliers can leverage to further optimize operations, energy savings and guest experiences. A cloud-native foundation provides a future-ready approach with a thermostat that’s responsive to cloud controls and logic rather than packed full of every possible scenario.
Move Complex Calculations to Cloud and AI
Cloud-native EMS systems flip the traditional model. Instead of investing in expensive thermostats in every room, properties can deploy simpler, less expensive devices that serve as endpoints while the heavy lifting happens in the cloud.
Consider a hotel in the San Francisco Bay area served by PG&E as its utility provider. A traditional smart thermostat would be fixed to a check-in setpoint, an unoccupied setback, and an unrented, check-out deadband. Over the course of the year, the region moves from summer to winter, and with a networked system, staff can push changes to the individual thermostats.
These logic routines have certinaly produced savings for hotels and become “best practices” for EMS in hospitality. But that scenario changes drastically with dynamic energy pricing.
For example, PG&E implements Time-of-Use (TOU) pricing for commercial electricity, which means the price changes based on the time and season. Energy is most expensive during peak periods (4-9 p.m.), slightly less costly during “part peak” periods (2-4 and 9-11 p.m. in the summer), even cheaper during off-peak (all other times) and at its lowest cost during “super off peak” (9 a.m.-2 p.m. during Winter and March through May).
For a 110-room select service property with 90% occupancy going into a weekend in July, the typical smart thermostat scenario might be to pre-cool the rooms in anticipation of typical check-out/check-in times and apply that logic universally across every room.
But with a cloud-native solution, you have infinite options: pre-cool the guest rooms when power costs are lowest? Or wait for check-in by the PMS? The optimal answer will vary for every room, every hour, every day, and based on the current rates from PG&E. The cloud-native EMS can perform that complex analysis in real time, to decide what’s best for optimal cost savings and guest comfort.
This kind of processing is impossible with in-room only hardware and, until recently, only available in extremely expensive building control systems for airports, hospitals, or universities. With widespread access to cloud processing, ML and AI, a new breed of EMS is now making this capability affordable for hospitality.
This fundamentally changes how hotels invest in EMS solutions. Rather than buying devices with a fixed set of features and capabilities, properties can install systems purpose-built to become more powerful over time through cloud software development.
Addressing the Connectivity Concern
One of the most common questions about a networked system is, What happens when the network goes down? Hoteliers worry the thermostat will stop working if it loses network connectivity. The answer is “no.”
Consider these two factors:
- Default settings provide a failsafe. While connected to the cloud, the EMS can operate independently, but will continue to keep the guest room comfortable even if offline. If the property’s guest Wi-Fi goes down, the thermostat will default to offline settings and continue to work.
- Wi-Fi uptime is already treated as mission-critical. Today’s hotels depend heavily on network connectivity for property management systems, entry access, point of sale, guest internet, streaming TV, and countless other critical operations. Your IT team already manages uptime as mission-critical infrastructure.
- Cloud-native EMS uses the guest Wi-Fi as the network infrastructure–a paradigm shift from the past in which separate mesh networks were installed specifically for the thermostats. These systems were typically outside the purview of the IT department or the guest Wi-Fi managed provider, and responsibility often fell to facilities maintenance to manage them. If the network went down, it might go unnoticed by guests or even staff, rendering the “smart” features less effective until connectivity was restored. But by leve raging the same professionally managed, critical Wi-Fi infrastructure that the entire hotel runs on, the EMS becomes much more effective and reliable.
Looking Forward, Not Backward
Most smart thermostat systems can pull data from in-room devices and generate reports showing what happened. But true cloud-native systems are bidirectional, predictive, and dynamic. They don’t just tell you what happened—they actively optimize operations in real time and continuously improve as algorithms get smarter.
The future of energy management lies in machine learning, AI, and predictive analytics, and it’s imperative to invest in technology that allows you to leverage these possibilities. That means you don’t need a smarter thermostat. You need smarter infrastructure that puts intelligence where it belongs: in the cloud.
If you are attending The Hospitality Show in Denver this week, feel free to stop by the Nomadix and Vingcard booth #1101 to chat about hospitality energy management.
About Nomadix
Nomadix, an ASSA ABLOY company, brings connected experiences to life. For over 25 years, Nomadix has been a trusted vendor to the world’s largest brands, delivering powerful and personalized connectivity and digital engagement solutions designed with real people in mind. Providing the backbone of visitor-based networks and managed Wi-Fi to properties and venues of any size in over 150 countries, Nomadix enables companies to connect, manage and engage in ways that redefine their digital customer experiences, help them make better business decisions and increase customer lifetime value. For more information, visit nomadix.com.
Aubrey Coggins
Director of Marketing
Nomadix, Inc.
Please visit:
Our Sponsor