ASSESSING ENERGY INTENSITY OF BEACH HOTELS IN AN UPCOMING TOURIST DESTINATION IN WEST BENGAL, INDIA

Hotels are part of the core sub-sectors of tourism and are indispensible for most tourist destinations. These are highly energy intensive and therefore, need to be brought under a destination-based comprehensive energy management plan, especially for nature-based destinations. This, in turn, calls for assessing their energy consumption pattern to help set energy management goals. This paper attempts to assess the energy use intensity (EUI) of the hotels in Mandarmani, an upcoming beach destination in West Bengal, including their respective daily energy usage per guest. A primary survey was conducted on 25 nos. hotels having an average capacity of about 68 beds. Information on the building aspects, bed capacity, average room occupancy, guest amenities, fossil fuel usage, other operational practices, and hotel energy bills were collected. The EUI of the hotel buildings varied within a range of 28.55 kWh/m2 /year and 357.08 kWh/m2 /year, with a mean of 99.43 kWh/m2 /year. The daily energy usage per guest was found to be an average of 5.92 kWh/guest/day, varying between 22.3 kWh/guest/day and 1.34 kWh/guest/day. These findings indicate ample scope for energy optimization and renewable energy integration in the hotels to ensure sustainable resource management