Hospitality Career E-Mag: NEWS | ITC Hotels, Trident, Oberoi and others ask executives to tame rising power bills

Year-end incentives of top executives at InterContinental hotels in India have been linked to a new target-the cost of energy their hotels consume. Energy bills at the hotels have risen to 15-16% of operational costs as compared to an average 7-8% in previous years.
The managers have been given the daunting task to prune it by 8% over the next three years. From installing solar panels to using piped gases for boilers instead of diesel, hotels have undertaken several initiatives to cut consumption of energy. Some of the hotel's competitors have invested in windmills to generate cheaper renewable energy. Government subsidies are helping them cut down on the cost of power. The timing is important. The hospitality sector is building up fast in India, to be prepared for a major boom 3-5 years down the line. And the industry is in the middle of an economic slowdown, when tourists and corporate clients first cut down on their travel and hotel budgets to mitigate cost escalations. "Rising power bills are playing truant. We are working on reducing consumption as the prices are beyond our control," said Rattan Keswani, president at the Trident Hotels, an Oberoi group company which runs 5-stars around the country. "For most hotels in India, heating, lighting and power (HLP) costs have doubled over the last two years from about 7-8% to 14-15% of their revenues today, which is now starting to pinch them," said Akshay Kulkarni, executive director at Cushman & Wakefield India. HLP costs are the second highest behind employee costs, which too have grown in the past few years.

Source

Search HR Jobs with Intercontinental Hotels