Hotel Guest Rooms Research Articles

Empirical investigation of occupant-centric thermal comfort in hotel guestrooms

Given the importance of occupant satisfaction with thermal comfort in hotel accommodations, previous studies have assessed thermal comfort using either local or global standards. In a hotel catering to diverse guests, a single standard may constrain the formulation of an optimal strategy for improving occupant satisfaction. To address this challenge, this study empirically investigates occupant-centric thermal comfort in hotel guestrooms located in a hot and humid climatic region. To this end, a living-lab-based case study was conducted on a hotel guestroom in Hong Kong, wherein two types of thermal comfort improvement strategies were devised from both local and global perspectives. First, to improve thermal comfort in line with the local standard, it was determined that an ancillary fan coil unit (FCU) energy consumption of 6.0 kW h (approximately 34 % of the existing energy consumption) was required. Second, to improve thermal comfort in line with the global standard, an ancillary FCU energy consumption of 9.4 kW h (approximately 53 % of the existing energy consumption) was necessary. Consequently, in a hot and humid climatic region, the distribution of thermal comfort may vary depending on the type of guest (e.g., domestic or foreign), and ancillary cooling energy expenditure may be incurred to enhance a guest's thermal comfort. The proposed approach is expected to contribute to the creation of occupant-tailored thermal comfort by considering an individual's thermal acclimation to a specific climatic region from both local and global perspectives.

Scalable investigation of energy usage patterns and saving potential in hotel guestrooms: Focused on occupancy states and electrical installations

In hotel guestrooms, under the category of non-stationary-operated building, energy usage patterns can vary significantly depending on occupant behaviors and preferences, making it challenging to formulate feasible energy-saving strategies. To address the challenge, this study proposes a scalable approach to investigate energy usage patterns and saving potential in hotel guestrooms, in which endogenous parameters (occupancy states and electrical installations) are comprehensively considered. The data was collected over a year from three guestrooms of Hotel “I” in Hong Kong, including energy usage for different electrical installations, indoor temperature and humidity, and check-in or check-out information. The main findings can be summarized as follows. First, energy usage patterns revealed that the average 15-minute interval energy usage during the check-in state was 56.49 Wh, while during the check-out state, it was 44.03 Wh (77.94% compared to the check-in state). Second, the proposed energy-saving strategies can be applied to the case study room, leading to a reduction of 247.53 kWh, which corresponds to 13.79% of the current annual energy usage (1,794.55 kWh) in the case study room. The proposed scalable approach is expected to contribute to enabling occupant-centric appliance control strategies in hotel guestrooms, depending on occupancy states, which leads to cost savings and promises various benefits, such as enhanced guest services and promotional advantages, such as “Green Hotel”.

Room guest satisfaction towards guestroom physical environment quality in the theme hotel

Guestroom design is essential in any hotel industry that can attract potential new guests. One of the advantages of a unique and memorable pleasant guestroom design is increasing revenue and profit for hotel operations. Today, many guestroom designs can merge with room guest satisfaction. Many themes and colors can enhance guest preferences to stay in the hotel. This study investigates the relationship between guestrooms' physical environment quality dimensions (i.e., guestroom ambiance, guestroom layout, guestroom cleanliness, guestroom furnishing, and guestroom lighting) towards room guest satisfaction. One hundred fifty questionnaires were collected from the guest who stayed at a theme hotel to test hypothesized relationships among the physical environment quality dimensions towards room guest satisfaction. The data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The study's result indicated significant relationships between guestroom ambiance, guestroom layout, guestroom cleanliness, guestroom furnishing, guestroom lighting, and room guests’ satisfaction. The outcome of this paper suggests that the hotel industry improve their design in hotel guestrooms and the hotel designers for upcoming build new hotels.

Analysis of temperature preference of guests from various countries/regions during summer and winter in a budget hotel in Kyoto, Japan

Energy consumption by air conditioning in hotels is significant and continues to be an important topic in the building energy sector, although hotels do require a high level of thermal comfort. This study focuses on the temperatures that people prefer in Japanese hotels after traveling long distances across countries or regions. We measured room temperature and surveyed 299 Japanese guests, and measured room temperatures on 7,435 nights by Japanese and foreigners. We investigated the transient responses when guests entered a room while resting, sleeping, and waking. Zero heating and cooling costs were directly paid by guests, who were allowed to freely set their preferred temperature. Five interesting findings have emerged from this study. First, there were no significant differences in the temperatures preferred in hotel guest rooms by the Japanese respondents who lived in different regions. Second, Japanese respondents preferred a “cool” environment in summer and a “warm” environment in winter. Third, Japanese respondents tended to prefer “dry” to “moist” in both summer and winter. Fourth, the preferred temperatures differed between summer and winter. Fifth, the preferred temperatures in the same hotel varied depending on the country or region of origin of the respondent, and were not necessarily higher in summer than in winter.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Using Hotels as Shelters After a Landslide.

On July 3, 2021, a landslide occurred in part of Atami City, Shizuoka, Japan. The government of Shizuoka Prefecture requested the dispatch of Shizuoka Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (S-DMATs). On day 2, the evacuees were evacuated into 2 hotels (A and B). Hotel A accommodated over 570 independent and dependent evacuees. Hotel B accommodated 44 dependent aged individuals, who lived in the same long-term health-care facility, together with their 11 caregivers. The evacuees in hotel B returned to the previous facility on day 10 without any specific medical problems. The evacuees in hotel A were managed in the guest rooms as family units. Individuals requiring care in guest rooms in hotel A became isolated because they could not call for help or walk. Furthermore, hotel guest rooms were not barrier-free. The S-DMATs supported the evacuees. Independent evacuees received the maximum benefits from the use of a hotel as a shelter. In contrast, it was difficult for dependent evacuees to benefit from the hotel as it is as a shelter when living alone in the hotel. Dependent evacuees required appropriate support to eat, walk, use the toilet, and keep themselves clean when using a hotel as a shelter.

Colour, emotion, and behavioral intentions in city hotel guestrooms

AbstractThis study explores the effects of colours on people's emotional states and behavioral intentions in a real‐world city hotel guestroom. For this study, blue, yellow, and gray were selected. According to literature, when it is desired to make a change on colour scheme in hotel rooms, the alteration should be applied to secondary colour while keeping the dominant colour constant. Thus, in this study, the alterations of colour scheme are only applied to bedspread and pillows fabrics. As results indicate, blue and yellow are associated with pleasure and arousal, whereas the gray colour evokes displeasure and no arousal. Yellow and blue are found to cause approach behavior in terms of customer loyalty, while the colour gray is found to cause avoidance behavior in city hotel guestrooms. There is a positive relationship between both pleasure and approach behavior and between arousal and approach behavior. The results can be useful for interior architects, designers, and hoteliers who emphasize touching guests' emotions and increasing approach behavior by creating favorable colour schemes. This study combines colour, emotion, and behavioral intentions in hospitality context which plays an essential role in filling gap in the literature about the effects of colour in a hospitality context.

Do ambient scents in hotel guest rooms affect customers’ emotions?

The introduction of ambient scents in different business facilities might be an effective strategy to influence customers’ emotions and, ultimately, their experience. Yet, there is scant evidence on the effects of introducing ambient scents in hotels and, particularly, in hotels’ private areas such as the guest rooms. Accordingly, this study aims to analyse the impact on customers’ positive emotions when a pleasant ambient scent is introduced in a hotel guest room. To this end, a randomized control trial was conducted in a real four-star hotel in Barcelona in which two experimental groups (N=99) were invited to enter and experience a scented guest room and an identical but unscented room, respectively. The happiness level and the emotional valence of the experiment’s participants were measured using a facial recognition technique. This methodological strategy represents one of the significant contributions of the study. The results show that, on average, individuals who entered the scented room were happier and had a better emotional state than individuals who entered the unscented room. These results suggest an important managerial implication for hoteliers who can improve the guests’ experience by implementing a non- expensive action and opens an avenue for future studies on scent marketing in hotels.

Exploring particulate matter pollution in hotel guestrooms

Purpose A growing number of travelers seek well-being when traveling. As concerning about outdoor air pollution in tourism destinations escalates, little is known about indoor air pollution in hotel guestrooms. The purpose of the present study is to assess particulate matter (PM) pollution in US hotel guestrooms and to provide baseline indoor PM readings in occupied and unoccupied rooms. Design/methodology/approach A series of field tests and experiments monitoring PM levels were conducted in the guestrooms overnight – with and without occupants – using the sophisticated, industrial-grade PM-monitoring equipment. Findings The results revealed that PM levels were very low when rooms were unoccupied or when guests were asleep. However, unhealthy PM mass concentrations were observed in occupied rooms when guests engaged in physical activity such as showering and walking around or while room attendants cleaned rooms. Among the physical activities, room cleaning caused hazardous indoor PM pollution, reaching 1,665.9 µg/m3 of PM10 and 140.4 µg/m3 of PM2.5 although they tended to be brief. Research limitations/implications Leveraging increasing guest demand in well-being is essential for sustainable business and further growth. Indoor air quality must be recognized as an important factor to be controlled for well-being and health of guests and employees. Major hotel brands should take it into consideration as they infuse well-being DNA into their products and culture. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical investigation of PM pollution both in occupied and unoccupied hotel guestrooms in the USA, which reveals unhealthy PM pollution associated with the routine human activities in occupied guestrooms.

Characterizing Variations in the Indoor Temperature and Humidity of Guest Rooms with an Occupancy-Based Climate Control Technology

This paper characterizes variations in the indoor temperature and humidity profiles of actual guest rooms equipped with Occupancy-Based Climate Control (OBCC) systems that were used to initiate a temperature setback to 15.6 °C in the winter and to 26.7 °C in the summer in the guest rooms. Empirical knowledge of these conditions can provide useful insights for an improved field demonstration and optimization of OBCC, as well as for a more realistic temperature and occupancy input for building simulations for hotel guest rooms. As a result, one year of one minute temperatures and humidity data was characterized against outdoor climate for three different occupancy modes, which was useful to identify the observed room-to-room variations in heat losses and resultant indoor temperatures during the heating season due to the different dynamic heat balance conditions of the guest rooms. This indicated potential discomfort in the rooms that appeared to have a stronger association between outdoor and indoor temperatures, which was also identified from the thermal comfort survey indicating thermostat-related discomfort sources. Interestingly enough, the guests who stayed in these rooms tended to set their thermostat at higher setpoint temperatures when they occupied the room, which appeared to compensate for the low balance-point temperatures of these rooms.

A Study on the Image Color Analysis of Hotel Guest Rooms for User-Focusing on the Image of Hotel Reservation App

A Study on the Image Color Analysis of Hotel Guest Rooms for User-Focusing on the Image of Hotel Reservation App

A Preliminary Study on Image Color Analysis of Hotel Guest Rooms

A Preliminary Study on Image Color Analysis of Hotel Guest Rooms

Long-term field investigation and modeling of electricity end-use patterns in hotel guest rooms

This paper presents the results of a long-term, detailed electricity end-use analysis of hotel guest rooms in order to provide a better understanding of the electricity use patterns in guest rooms and their explanatory factors. To accomplish this, a one-year of sub-hourly electricity measurements for an entire floor and major electricity end uses of fourteen guest rooms in a case-study hotel in Washington, D.C. were analyzed along with coincident weather and occupancy data collection. A regression analysis was performed on the monthly and daily end-use electricity data to identify key variables affecting different electricity end uses of the guest rooms. As a result, it was found that a regression model with a single temperature variable did not fully describe the electricity use behaviors of hotel guest rooms. The addition of the occupancy variable significantly improved the model fit for both monthly and daily total floor electricity use and was statistically significant. A review of the electricity end uses showed strong correlations between outdoor temperature and the electricity end uses for space conditioning, especially the DOAS unit and the VRF outdoor unit. However, for other end uses such as plug loads, lighting, and the VRF indoor units, the observed correlations to outdoor temperature were not significant but were moderately correlated to occupancy.

Energy efficiency opportunities in Hotels

According to the statistics in Egypt (2013), the number of hotels is 1193, about 407 of them have contracted power greater than 500 kW. Air conditioning, lighting, water heating and refrigeration represent the main activities demanding electrical energy in hotel business. The energy consumption per night spend changes a lot, depending on various factors; facilities provided, category of hotel, occupancy , geographical situation, weather conditions, nationality of clients, design and control of the installations. Energy benchmarking is an internal management tool designed to provide ongoing, reliable and verifiable tracking on the hotels performance. The most useful performance indicator (or Energy Efficiency Benchmarking) of hotels are: Lighting Power Density (LPD) in W (for lighting)/m2, and energy intensity (kWh/m2/ y). There are multiple benefits for improving energy in hotel business; reduces the hotel's operating cost, reduces climate change risks and promotes green tourism. Energy efficiency opportunities are low-cost measures and cost- effective investments. There are many energy saving opportunities for lighting in hotel's guest rooms as well as the more obvious savings in lobbies and exterior lighting areas. Behavior campaigns can yield substantial energy savings, both through the guests and housekeeper behavior. Encouraging housekeepers to use natural light during room cleaning is a simple first step to implement energy saving program. This paper presents the energy efficiency guidelines and energy benchmarking for hotels. Also a case study showing how the energy efficiency program implemented is presented.

Impact of Computer-Generated Images on LODGSCAPE Perceptions and Visit Intentions

ABSTRACTPrevious studies have recognized that the quality of physical environment influences customers’ satisfaction and positive behavioral outcome. A limited number of studies have incorporated an extensive range of hotel guestroom servicescape attributes into their instruments. The purpose of this study is to examine the multidimensional role of perceived servicescape of computer-generated images (CGI) of hotel rooms that are displayed on hotel websites. This study has two objectives: (a) To develop an instrument that comprehensively measures multidimensional perceived servicescape quality of a 3-D CGI depiction of hotel guestrooms; (b) To measure the effect of different 3-D CGI servicescape dimensions on expected guestroom satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Guestroom aesthetics, layout, light, and furniture quality were identified as factors of the LODGSCAPE instrument. Two factors, aesthetics and layout had significant effects on customer satisfaction. The results suggest that hotel management should emphasize guestroom aesthetics at the expense of lighting and furniture quality.

Tipping: The case of hotel turndown service

Turndown services are experiential and value-added practices to make guests feel cared-for in luxury hotels. Previous research has found that when receiving an additional or exceptional service, people may feel obligated to respond with a reciprocal behavior, such as providing tips. This study aims to investigate the effects of hotel turndown services on tips given to hotel room attendants. The results revealed that the room attendants received more tips for providing turndown service, both in terms of the frequency of receiving tips and the amount of those tips. The findings suggest that without the existence of a tipping norm in hotel guest rooms, the relationship between service and tip seems much clearer.

호텔 봉사료 제도에 따른 선택권 박탈감과 불공정성 지각이 전환의도에 미치는 영향

The service charge system of most hotel enterprises in Korea does not have clear standards, and causes controversies as it requires improvement in terms of execution and distribution. This study referred to the preceding studies to suggest the deprivation feeling of right to choose and the unfairness perception as the two negative factors that the customers can perceive about the current service charge system in Korea, and clarified the impact of these factors on the switching intention that can be negative to the hotel enterprises. It also verified the perceived employees’ service attitude for more meaningful findings. For this purpose, it selected the domestic customers who have visited hotel guest rooms and restaurants in Korea within the last 6 months as the parent population and surveyed 292 of them through a professional research service agency from March 24, 2014 to March 28, 2014 for the analysis. As a result, it was found that both the deprivation feeling of right to choose and the unfairness perception have a significant positive impact on the switching intention and significantly modulate perceived employees’ service attitude.

Direct and flanking airborne sound transmission for hotel guestrooms; results and comments regarding three field tests

A “four-and-a-half star” hotel was constructed within an existing historic structure. Among the design/build team there were differences of opinion of what was needed for peace and privacy for hotel guests. Hotel guidelines suggested a moderately high airborne sound transmission class rating for the primary wall partition. Three field tests were conducted during an early phase of construction. A strong flanking transmission path in a corridor wall assembly was discovered during the first test. An error in preparation for this test caused an important opportunity for valuable field test data development to be lost regarding a flanking path via a common ceiling, which points to the kinds of difficulties encountered in conducting field tests. The second test showed improvement in results due to rectification of the corridor wall flanking path. The third test gave information about flanking transmission via the common floor. Comments will be made regarding field testing and flanking sound transmission.

The interactive effect of Gestalt situations and arousal seeking tendency on customers' emotional responses: matching color and music to specific servicescapes

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the interactive effect of Gestalt versus non‐Gestalt situations, and arousal seeking tendency (AST) on customers' pleasure and arousal with matching color and music to hotel bars and hotel guest rooms; thereby providing guidance for service providers.Design/methodology/approachThis is an experimental design study with four treatments. Fictitious hotel bar and guest room video clips were created with the appropriate manipulation of color schemes and music as independent variables. After the video clip was shown, subjects were asked to complete a survey instrument. The hypothesized model was then tested.FindingsThe results showed that the interactive effect of Gestalt versus non‐Gestalt, and AST on an individual's pleasure and arousal are both positive and statistically significant. As an individual's AST increases, both the arousal score and pleasure score increased in Gestalt situations (dynamic bar and tranquil guest room) and decreased in non‐Gestalt situations (tranquil bar and dynamic guest room).Research limitations/implicationsOnly jazz music and a specific type of hotel bar and hotel guest room settings with a limited target market were utilized. Similarly, the color schemes that were included were the two extremes (dynamic and tranquil). Results can be generalized to other similar settings only with caution.Practical implicationsHospitality firms should design spaces taking into account the holistic or Gestalt effect of objective elements of a servicescape. Managers should understand that individual uses of a servicescape and reactions to objective servicescape elements will be different depending on a specific type of servicescape.Originality/valueNo research has been done investigating the effects of the color and music combined in two distinct service settings. The value of assessing effects of different settings is demonstrated.

The Microsoft Home: Applications for the Lodging and Restaurant Industry Today and in the Future

The purpose of this article is to analyze the effects of home technologies on guestroom technologies. After analyzing the evolution of home technological innovations and the flow of these technologies into hotel guestrooms, the technologies featured in the Microsoft Home of the Future will be examined and their likelihood of making the transition into hospitality industry will be discussed. The Microsoft Home of the Future uses the latest in current and futuristic software and hardware including Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), electronic wallboard, light projection devices, and voice recognition.

Customers' Satisfaction with Hotel Guestrooms: A Case Study in Ubon Rachathani Province, Thailand

The objective of this study was to identify Customers' satisfaction with hotel guestrooms in the province of Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, and to determine the factors that affected this satisfaction. Data were collected from 96 customers by the completion of a questionnaire. Most of the customers were male, between 25 and 35 years, with an income level of 10,000–20,000 baht per month. The majority were government officers. The highest mean of most customers' satisfaction was overall cleanliness in guestrooms. The lowest mean of customers' satisfaction was the quality of equipment in the bathroom. However, these results were different in each hotel category. The factor affecting the customers' satisfaction with the interior decoration in the guestroom was customers' occupation. The hotel category was affected by the overall cleanliness of the guestroom, the cleanliness of linen sheets, pillow covers and blankets, the quality of equipment in the bathroom and bathroom amenities offered.