How much energy does a hotel use? What the UK figures show

Is there an official figure for hotel energy use?

Not in the government's annual statistics. The main official statistics on energy use in non-domestic buildings come from the Non-domestic National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework (ND-NEED), published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). It links Valuation Office records of buildings in England and Wales with their metered electricity and gas use, and groups the buildings into ten building uses.

Hotels come under "Hospitality", together with restaurants, hostels, holiday homes, guest houses and pubs. ND-NEED doesn't publish a separate figure for hotels or for any other part of the group.

Hotels are also a small part of it. A DESNZ research report on hospitality buildings, with energy data for 2019, counted about 4,100 hotels of three stars and under and about 3,400 hotels of four stars and above or in major chains, out of nearly 196,000 hospitality premises in England and Wales. Pubs, restaurants and self-catering holiday homes far outnumber them. So the Hospitality median describes a typical hospitality building, not a typical hotel.

Our guide to business energy use explains the ND-NEED figures for each of its ten building uses.

The official figures for hospitality buildings

These are the ND-NEED 2026 figures for Hospitality, for energy used in 2024:

The gas figures cover only buildings with a mains gas supply. ND-NEED doesn't include oil or LPG, so a hotel heated by oil or LPG can only compare its electricity.

Per square metre, the median hospitality building uses more electricity and more gas than the median for any other building use in ND-NEED. DESNZ says the high electricity figure could be driven by catering, and that the high gas figure is at least partly due to catering.

The per square metre figures need care for hotels, though. Two in three hospitality buildings (67%) have no floor area in ND-NEED, against 18% of all non-domestic buildings, and buildings without one are left out of these figures. ND-NEED also removes the floor area of building types the Valuation Office doesn't rate by floor area, including "Hotels (3 star and under)", country house hotels and coaching inns. So the per square metre medians leave out hotels the Valuation Office lists as three star and under, which tend to be smaller than four star and chain hotels.

The CIBSE benchmark for hotels

The main hotel benchmark we've been able to check comes from the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE). Its guide TM46, published in 2008, sets the benchmarks used for Display Energy Certificates. For a hotel or boarding house, the typical figures are:

• Electricity: 105 kWh per m² a year
• Fossil fuels (gas, oil and other fuels): 330 kWh per m² a year

TM46 benchmarks are set at the median, so they show what a "typical" building of its type uses. A hotel well above them uses more than a typical one for its size, and one well below uses less.

TM46 also has benchmarks for uses you'll find inside many hotels:

As a worked example, a hotel with 1,000 m² of floor area would be in line with the typical hotel benchmark at about 105,000 kWh of electricity and 330,000 kWh of gas or other fuels a year.

Keep its limits in mind:

• It's old. TM46 was published in 2008, using older figures from many sources. CIBSE still lists it as active, and we haven't found a newer edition.
• Few hotels have been checked against it. Display Energy Certificates are only required for public buildings, and a review of the certificates lodged up to February 2010, after TM46 was published, found hotels were among the types with fewer than 50 of them.
• It doesn't allow for how full you are. The Display Energy Certificate rating allows for weather and longer hours of use, but not for how many people use a building. An allowance for high occupancy density was considered when TM46 was developed, but rejected.
• It counts all fossil fuels together, not just gas.

Why the two sets of figures differ

ND-NEED's hospitality median is higher than TM46 for electricity (160 against 105 kWh per m²) but lower for heating fuels (279 kWh per m² of mains gas, against TM46's 330 for all fossil fuels). They aren't measuring the same thing. The ND-NEED medians use metered data for 2024 from hospitality buildings with a floor area in ND-NEED, including restaurants, and they leave out pubs and hotels of three stars and under, whose floor area ND-NEED removes. TM46 is a typical figure for a hotel or boarding house, published in 2008 from older data, and it counts every fossil fuel, not only mains gas.

Neither is a target. Both are a rough guide to whether your hotel's use is in the normal range, and the most useful comparison is often with your own bills over time.

Is there a figure per hotel room?

Not an official one. We haven't found any UK government figure for energy use per room or per guest night.

The hotel industry's own method, the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative, is free to use and measures a hotel's carbon footprint per occupied room each day. It splits a hotel's energy between rooms and meeting space by floor area, using utility invoices, meter readings and guest numbers. It reports carbon rather than kWh, so it isn't a direct energy benchmark.

You can still track your own kWh per occupied room night from your bills and booking records. Over time, alongside your total kWh, it helps show whether a change in your use is down to how busy you've been. Some use, such as heating a pool, carries on however few guests you have, so expect the figure to rise in quiet months.

What uses the most energy in a hotel?

The government's Building Energy Efficiency Survey (BEES), carried out in 2014-15, looked at hospitality buildings, including hotels, pubs, restaurants and cafes. It found:

• Catering. Catering was the largest use of electricity in hospitality, at 54%, and also a large use of gas and other fuels. Kitchens need extract ventilation to deal with cooking smells and heat, which adds to fan use.
• Hot water. The survey found hotels had high hot water use linked to washing facilities, and that this was the major driver of hot water use in the sector.
• Heating. Space heating was the largest use of gas and other fuels in every sector, although catering was also substantial in hospitality.
• Cooling and chilled storage. Cooling and humidification use was low in many sectors, but hospitality was one of the five where it was most significant. Chilled storage of food and drink was also significant in hospitality.
• Long hours. 43% of hospitality floor area was in premises open more than 20 hours a day.

Two more things matter in many hotels:

• Pools and spas. The Carbon Trust says that in a large hotel, the pool alone can account for a significant amount of total energy costs, and that pools and spas may only be used for a few hours a day yet keep heating and ventilation running around the clock. The TM46 benchmark for a swimming pool centre is more than three times the hotel benchmark for fossil fuels.
• Laundry. We haven't found an official figure for laundry. If you wash bedding and towels on site, it adds to your hot water and drying load, so it's worth knowing how much it uses.

The weather matters too. Gas use for heating rises in cold months, so compare a full year, or the same months each year, rather than a winter month with a summer one. The ND-NEED gas figures are adjusted for temperature, but your bills aren't.

How to compare your own hotel's energy use

1. Gather 12 months of bills for electricity and gas, and note the kWh for each separately. The Carbon Trust suggests reviewing a year of bills, taking meter readings once a month and checking them against your invoices.
2. Compare per building with the Hospitality medians of 10,000 kWh of electricity and 33,700 kWh of gas. Remember the medians cover pubs, restaurants and holiday homes as well as hotels.
3. Compare per square metre. Divide each year's kWh by your floor area and compare the result with TM46 (105 and 330) and ND-NEED (160 and 279). The business rates valuation service may not help here, because many hotels aren't valued on floor area. If your hotel has an Energy Performance Certificate, it shows the total floor area. You can look it up on GOV.UK's Find an energy certificate service, which covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
4. Track your use per occupied room night from your booking records, so busy and quiet months can be compared fairly.
5. Use half-hourly data if you have it. A smart or advanced meter shows when your hotel uses energy, including what's running overnight. See our guide to smart meters for business.
6. Meter big uses separately where you can, such as a pool, spa, laundry or kitchen, so you can see which one is changing.

What to check on your hotel's energy bills

Your use is only half of your bill. It's also worth checking:

• Actual readings. Estimated readings make it hard to track your use. Our guide to reading a business electricity bill shows how to tell them apart.
• Your contract end date. If your contract has ended and you haven't agreed a new one, you may be paying out-of-contract rates. Our guide to business energy contracts explains the terms that decide what you pay.
• A change of owner. If you've taken over a hotel and are using energy without agreeing a contract, you'll be on a deemed contract, and deemed rates are usually higher. Our change of tenancy guide explains what to do in the first week.
• The usage figures your contract is based on. If you've added rooms, a restaurant or a spa, or lengthened your season, they may be out of date.
• Capacity charges. Larger hotels with an agreed supply capacity may pay a daily charge for it. Our guide to kVA capacity charges explains it.

What you pay per kWh

How much your energy costs depends on your use, the price per kWh you pay and your standing charges. Our business energy prices page shows what businesses in each usage band pay for business electricity and gas, using the government's figures.

Rules for larger hotel groups

If your business is large, you may have to report on your energy use. The Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) applies to UK businesses, and their groups, with 250 or more employees, or with a turnover over £44 million and a balance sheet over £38 million. For the current phase, a business qualifies if it meets the test on 31 December 2026, and the deadline to comply is 5 December 2027. An ESOS assessment covers the energy used in buildings, industrial processes and transport.

Display Energy Certificates only apply to buildings over 250 m² occupied by public authorities and often visited by the public, so a privately run hotel doesn't need one.