Benchmarking for better performance

• Metering identifies sources of high water consumption in a hotel
• Targeted actions to save water reduce water bill by € 3 150

Hotel Festa Sofia is a modern, stylish hotel located on the outskirts of Vitosha mountain. The four-star hotel employs 85 people and has 120 modern rooms, two restaurants and three bars. 

To improve its performance, the hotel's management developed and implemented a service quality guide. It analysed data from metering activities and inputs from its cleaner production (CP) team which show excessive consumption of water, electricity, and gas compared to typical four-star hotel operations (international benchmarks).

The comparisons revealed several areas where improvements could be made grouped under various headings.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues: divided into internal (corporate strategy and communication, improving organisational structure and implementing policies and procedures for human resources; and external (solving infrastructure problems and CSR regarding suppliers).

Technical issues: installation of electricity meters for each department (kitchen, warehouse, rooms division, garage, conference rooms, etc.) to obtain accurate consumption data; installing new water-saving taps and shower heads.

Key results 

From CP and CSR measures:

• Optimising communication and teamwork to save time and resources
• Continuous professional training of staff
• Improved working conditions

From technical measures:

• Benchmarking exercise to set resource-efficiency targets
• Introduction of water metering system that saves 479 m3 of drinking water per month
• Water-saving actions cut € 3 150 off the water bill