Why Hotels Should Make the Switch to LED Lighting If you’ve ever worked in the hotel industry, you know that there are a number of fixed costs that go along with operating a hotel. The fixed costs that you just can’t avoid are generally heating/cooling and lighting, which is due to the nature of how a hotel operates as a business. Certain lights have to be kept on whether the hotel is at guest capacity or is nearly empty. Hotels always need to keep their lobby, hallways, and common areas illuminated 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. That’s why lighting is one of the most critical areas in which hotels can cut costs. One of the easiest transitions a hotel can make in this area is to switch all of their lighting to LED technology. This transition can be accomplished in several different ways that we will go over in this blog. Shine Retrofits provides a wide selection of hotel lighting and indoor lighting products you can browse through. Or, you can browse through our extensive listing of LED products to get an idea of the types of LED lights that may work in your hotel. There are several cases of hotels saving big money by switching some or all of their lights to LEDs. Green Lodging News reported that an LED retrofit of the Chatwal Hotel in New York City reduced energy use in the space by 90 percent. The publication reported that the hotel saved $124,255 in the first year after making the switch to LEDs. These are considerable monetary savings for a business, allowing the hotel to turn around and reinvest this money in other parts of the hotel that need more monetary assistance. If you’re a hotel looking to switch to LEDs, it’s important that you know all the benefits and drawbacks of the process going in. For many businesses, it can be quite an investment to switch over all of your lighting to a brand-new technology. That’s why we want to help you understand as much about LED lighting as you can. Benefits of Switching to LEDs There are numerous benefits to switching over your hotel building to LED technology. The main benefits include energy savings, reduced maintenance, increased lamp life, and lighting power. The first benefit is energy and money savings. This is the reason that LEDs have gotten so much coverage when it comes to saving money. To truly understand how much LEDs can save on energy use, all you have to do is take a look into the numbers. The Simple Dollar recently compared three different lighting technologies in a study to find out just how superior LED bulbs were in energy efficiency and cost. Over the lifetime of one LED bulb, they found that you’d spend $8 for energy use and bulb costs for LED technology, and $21 dollars for incandescent technology. Multiply this by the thousands of bulbs in a hotel, and you can truly appreciate the staggering amount of energy and money you’ll save with LEDs. Another benefit is maintenance and overall lamp LED lamp life. The average LED bulb lasts about 50,000 hours, which is over five years of use if the bulb is kept on 24/7. In comparison, the average incandescent bulb lasts about 2,000 hours, which is less than two months operating on that same 24/7 schedule. Even if LEDs didn’t save money on energy, the money saved on buying new bulbs would make it a superior choice. Add in the factor of having to pay employees to go change out all those bulbs (many of which are in high ceiling applications and other hard to reach places), and LEDs can save you a considerable amount of money on maintenance and bulb replacement. One benefit of LEDs that isn’t usually talked about is their lighting power. Modern LEDs provide a wide spectrum of light temperatures, color, and strength. This allows you to customize the new LED lighting in your hotel so that you can capture just the right atmosphere or each space. Since hotels have such a wide variety of spaces, such as lobbies, workout rooms, dining rooms, and guest rooms, it will be necessary to buy a wide variety of lights. Most LED fixtures allow the choice of dimming options and color temperature, allowing you the flexibility to provide your dining room with warm, relaxing lighting and your gym with bright, invigorating lighting with LED technology. The Downsides of Switching to LEDs One initial downside to LEDs is their upfront costs. More conventional lighting such as incandescent and fluorescents are usually cheaper to buy. That means switching over to LED lighting can be quite an investment. If your hotel doesn’t have a lot of free cash to spend on a project, it might be hard to make the big changes you want to make in your lighting system. Another downside to LEDs is that some products don’t have quite the quality of lighting that some incandescent and halogen lights have. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to the Color Rendering Index, or CRI, of the lights you are buying. The quality of the LED product you buy can vary dramatically, which is why we make a huge effort to provide you with best-LED products available today. If the upfront costs of LEDs are a problem, you can consider an LED retrofit as well. Shine Retrofits has a whole product page dedicated to LED retrofit kits. Browse the product listings to get an idea of what lights you can easily switch out for LED technology. If you need any assistance, our team of lighting professionals are only a phone call away! If you have any questions about switching to LED technology, or on what kind of lighting is appropriate for your hotel or business, we’d love to help. Our team of lighting experts at Shine Retrofits can walk you through the process of buying new LED fixtures or retrofits for your project, and can help you pick out the right product for you. Please call our customer service team at 1-800-983-1315 anytime Monday through Friday, 6 am to 6 pm, Mountain Standard Time. We can’t wait to hear from you!