Boiler Trends in the Hospitality Industry

Like most businesses, hotels are always competing for customers to keep their hotels at maximum occupancy, while delivering luxury and guest comfort.  However, off nights and vacant rooms are just part of the business.  To minimize the potential of unoccupied rooms, guest satisfaction is imperative, and disruptions are minimized as much as possible.

As property owners/managers in the hospitality industry look to purchase boilers for hotel’s HVAC systems, key areas of interest are cost effectiveness, reliability and footprint.  Owners are looking for reliable products that require less labor-intensive maintenance because certain equipment problems can put blocks of rooms, or the hotel out of commission until they are fixed.

In the past, the boiler was a large footprint recirculating system in the basement serving the entire property.  The boiler was constantly running so there was always a supply of hot water.  When the boiler required maintenance, the hot water for the entire facility was down.  To minimize disruption to guests, maintenance would take place during the day.  But if there was a larger issue or even a boiler failure, that could mean expensive rental boilers, unhappy customers and unoccupied rooms.

This is one reason hotels are trending to smaller footprint compact boilers.  With compact boilers there is no stored water within the boiler, this also means the standing energy loss is small, unlike traditional fire/water tube boiler systems.

Consider this, if a hotel has a compact boiler system allocated per floor, they can offer a fast supply of hot water.  If a hotel has a low occupancy rate for a night, they can focus their guests on certain floors and not operate those boilers.  If the boiler system needs maintenance, the property is only isolating a floor for example and not the entire building.

These boiler systems are small enough to go up an elevator, fit through a 36” doorway and only take up a fraction of the space compared to large boiler systems.

Another factor in today’s environmentally and sustainability conscious world, property managers at hotels are striving to lessen their carbon footprint. One way this can be achieved is with compact gas or electric water boilers. Large fire or water tube boilers tend to produce high levels of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) during the combustion process, contributing significantly to air pollution. Compact, or low NOx boilers are designed to minimize this emission considerably.  As regulations become stricter to reduce pollution, these smaller boilers will meet environmental compliance, be more energy and cost efficient, offer reliable performance and enhance the properties corporate responsibility.

Goodway has partnered with Lochinvar, a compact boiler manufacturer that fits the above objective perfectly.  Accompanying the industry leading preventive maintenance solutions of Goodway with Lochinvar ensures their boilers efficient operation and longevity