Economic And Environmental Sustainability In Serviced Accommodation

At Evo we take pride in being a company that priorities our impact within the industry and to working towards a goal that is equally beneficial for all our stakeholders. These goals we set are to make sure our environmental impact is as minimal as possible and our economic targets are met. These company priorities are often linked with each other to reduce physical and economic waste through out all our properties providing sustainable serviced accommodation in Brighton and Sussex.

Evo manage properties on the behalf of the landlord, to bring in the greatest financial

gain possible while also maintaining the highest level of customer satisfaction. This is

achieved through the quality of the property, communication, and level of service provided

throughout their stay. Our stance was the changes we want to make had to be maximum impact with minimal disruption, this meant providing guests and our properties with features and modifications that would not affect the overall quality of the stay. Our research indicated that 75% of people want to make at least one eco-friendly stay a year and further that 58% of people would prefer their holiday home to be an eco-friendly getaway. The primary issue was that when coming to booking their stay would not pay the additional amount to have make this change to their Holiday Let, so we had to think of ways of providing guests with environmental stays but without discouraging them if it cost a premium.

The first issue to address is probably one people use the most without thinking of the excess waste, that is water. Guests use this to wash themselves (showers, washing hands), clean dishes, flush toilets and for drinking too. We identified three areas in that changes could be made. The first is water aerators, this is a small attachment that is placed in the screw section at the end of the tap. This feature is seamless, so much so that during our research we found many homeowners were unaware that this not only existed but also the fact that many already had it fitted without knowing. These have huge upside potential as they can save up to 1,274 liters of water a month (European University Institute).

Radiator thermostats and smart meters are improvements that will take a contractor to come and visit but will not be too time-consuming. Adding radiator thermostats means you are able to control the required temperature in each room and set it to a specific heat desired. You may want to do this if one room has better insulation than others and requires less heat to maintain the desired temperature. A smart meter allows you to visualise your usage in a much clearer way than previously, it displays how much gas and electricity you are using throughout your home and what the cost will be. We find this effective in holiday homes so guests can see the amount that they are using where maybe its not required. Letting guests see this can affect them consciously and subconsciously, some maybe be more keen to make sure they are not wasting any unnecessary energy and would do this whether there was a smart meter or not however those guests that don't care or just don't think about it can help to subconsciously affect their decisions to leave lights on or heating when not required as they can see the cost of this and how much they really are wasting every day.

A full draft excluder installation can take longer to have in place as you need to identify

where the air is coming from and where to place the excluder sufficiently to stop this. However having this in place can look to reduce average heating costs by a fifth as well as an 86% reduction of air infiltration on single-glazed windows.

Some of the more drastic recommendations made are more situational and maybe only necessary for the more dated properties such as country cottages. Some of these may not have had major changes to them any time recently. Often these properties have old boilers with some of them even being oil-based which requires them to be maintained and topped up. This is costly to have somebody go out to the properties each time to have this attended to as well as the boiler running at a low-efficiency rating. Looking to improve this would result in a better heating quality for the property and also save time and money not having to attend to oil levels and managing this. The same situation applies to properties insulation, older ones will not have had attention to insulation and this is something that makes all the other suggestions more complete. Looking to implement the changes recommended above with poor insulation means you might not see the desired results, making sure exterior walls and ceilings are properly insulated helps bring all changes into one big overall improvement.

With the question of can short term rentals be sustainable? Our answer to that is yes, with the right tailored management service to each property we believe the process to sustainability can be easy.