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January 2007
Insider: Pool Your Resources: Save Money
Hotel and resort operators spend a ton of their overhead on electricity. All told, the entire industry spends an average of $5.3 billion a year on electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In my article, “Pool Your Resources: Save Electricity”, in this week's online issue of Hotel Business Review, I lay out a no-cost program franchisors can offer their franchise members to save them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on their utility bills.
It’s called electricity aggregation, and it’s a simple way for hotel operators to drive down electricity. The program works by pooling the electricity use of franchisees in the same deregulated market to buy electricity in bulk from a third-party supplier.
The savings is often far better than individual franchisees can get if they shopped on their own. Plus, aggregation is a value-added service that franchisors in the hotel and resort industry can offer their members as part of their benefits package.
But forming a successful aggregation pool is a time-consuming process for the average hotel operator. That’s why franchisees should consider offloading the entire process to energy management consultants, who have the experience and built-in relationships to save franchisees 10 percent above what they earned just by being in the market.
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