Emirates Central Cooling Systems Cooperation (Empower) announced on Tuesday that it had registered a 30% growth in hotel customers at the end of April 2012, compared to the same period last year.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Hotel Show 2012, Ahmad bin Shafar, CEO of Empower, said that he was optimistic about the hotel industry adopting district cooling technology over the course of the year and beyond.
“We support specialised exhibitions like this one (the Hotel Show) in order to spread awareness of district cooling to hotels. To date, 26 hotels in Dubai use district cooling services from Empower. We are optimistic that more hotels will move towards this emerging technology, which offers great advantages over conventional cooling offerings,” he explained.
“While considering the growth rate of hotel rooms in the UAE during this period, Empower’s growth in this segment exceeds the hotel industry rate,” bin Shafar said.
He added that since the mandate that the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce had passed stipulated that all hotels must reduce their carbon footprint and opt for environmentally friendly amenities and supplies, district cooling had the opportunity to grow in the market.
“The current market tendencies give more room to adopt district cooling technology for hotel buildings, especially where initial capital investment is a deciding factor.”
“District cooling saves the customer from investment in a plant room, chillers and equipments, water tanks, cooling towers, sub stations, additional drainage facilities, civil infrastructure, cabling works, control and instrumentation, additional space, manpower requirements and maintenance,” bin Shafar explained further.
Over the last decade, the demand for district cooling has increased rapidly, with large scale projects being amongst the biggest adopters of the technology.
Bin Shafar added that he expected a more hotels to pick up district cooling over the course of 2012 because it provided all the benefits of out-sourcing the technology and facilities instead of bearing its establishment costs.