InSitu Asia Adopts Smart Room Solution to Advance Energy Management and System Maintenance
Energy Savings During COVID19
15%
HVAC Optimisation
33%
In the Pipeline:
ENHANCED
GUEST EXPERIENCE
Background
InSitu Asia is a creator, developer, and operator of hospitality projects with principal offices in Singapore and Tokyo. Central to its values and commitment to craftsmanship and sustainability, InSitu invests and applies cutting edge technology into their development projects to ensure their properties share sensibility and sensitivity to the environment, biodiversity and cultures.
The three boutique villas in Bali, owned by InSitu Asia (Origin Ubud, Origin Seminyak and Aria Villas Ubud) feature modern landscaping and facilities that integrate with the existing flora and local scenes which encapsulate their firm environmental vision.
The Challenge
Highlighting a common dilemma amongst those operating within the hotel industry, InSitu Asia faced the challenge of providing exceptional guest experiences while managing high energy expenditures that inevitably generate a significant carbon footprint from its operations. Hence, to better align to their contemporary and sustainable operational ethos, InSitu Asia sought out a smart solution that could substantially reduce its electricity costs and its overall capital expenditures from the cooling system to minimise the hotel’s environmental impact while in operation.
Ultimately, InSitu Asia’s primary objective is to conserve energy wherever possible by optimising its A/C systems and its overall lifespan with advanced maintenance and management strategies. Therefore, the hotel group sourced for a cutting-edge, data-driven energy management solution that could maximise their energy efficiency and optimise their overall HVAC system performance.
The Solution
InSitu Asia installed SensorFlow’s solution across a total of 24 villas across its three Bali properties: Origin Seminyak, Origin Ubud and Aria Ubud with the primary objective of energy conservation. Origin Seminyak was able to immediately automate their HVAC systems based on the live guestroom’s occupancy status. Working closely with SensorFlow’s dedicated Customer Success Manager, InSitu Asia could maximise their energy savings by optimising individual property’s automation settings without compromising on guest satisfaction and stay experience.
By providing actionable insights on hotel room environments, SensorFlow’s smart room management solution allows InSitu Asia to accomplish its energy-saving initiatives while also optimising its operational management. Beyond improving their operational efficiency and productivity, SensorFlow also offers InSitu Asia the additional benefit of enhancing their guests’ satisfaction by collecting and providing actionable insights on occupancy trends and their guests’ interactions with room environments and HVAC systems. The added benefit was very much in line with the brand’s commitment to providing excellent guest services at the highest operational standards.
SensorFlow also provides regular and detailed analysis and insights on humidity and system performance to support InSitu Asia’s HVAC and room management strategies. By gathering real-time data on individual rooms’ A/C and ambient temperatures as well as dew point levels, SensorFlow can help identify rooms with high humidity risk and underperforming A/C units for timely maintenance. This information and alerts enable the hotel engineers at InSitu Asia to perform more effective and data-driven predictive maintenance strategies.
Furthermore, SensorFlow plays a considerable part in helping InSitu Asia achieve its sustainability goals. In addition to saving energy and substantially reducing their carbon footprint, InSitu Asia is also amplifying their positive environmental contributions via SensorFlow’s reforestation project with One Tree Planted whereby a tree will be planted on behalf of the hotel for every tonne of CO2 emissions that InSitu Asia offsets with SensorFlow’s solution.
The Results
Based on the 1060 automation hours achieved in May 2020 alone, during the low occupancy period due to the COVID-19 outbreak, SensorFlow can confidently project Origin Seminyak’s eight villas to generate exponential growth in energy savings when occupancy rates start to recover.
Leveraging SensorFlow’s analysis of A/C setpoint and room occupancy trends, Origin Seminyak could maximise their savings with minimal manual intervention by remotely adjusting their automation settings via SensorFlow’s cloud-based dashboard. The savings maximisation plans include extending automation hours by an additional hour, reducing occupancy detection timeout by 5 minutes and increasing their entire property’s A/C minimum setpoint by 2 degrees Celsius.
REMOTE AND EFFICIENT VILLA MAINTENANCE DURING COVID-19
Despite Origin Ubud’s and Aria Ubud’s temporary closures during the COVID-19 period, InSitu Asia was able to ensure optimal villa conditions to prepare for the two properties’ reopening. Through a combination of remote room monitoring and regular monthly reports on critical property insights provided by SensorFlow’s customer success manager, InSitu Asia was able to conduct data-driven humidity management and predictive maintenance strategies. Ultimately, InSitu Asia managed to avoid costly repairs and potential room damage that could have resulted from excessively high room humidity levels over an extended period of closure.
As a property that remained operational during the COVID-19 period with a limited workforce, Origin Seminyak also gained massive support from SensorFlow’s solution in maintaining optimal air quality and maintenance across all their guestrooms. The villa manager was able to implement remote maintenance strategies such as mobile and real-time monitoring of room environments and activating the pre-cooling function of the A/C via SensorFlow’s online dashboard anytime, anywhere.
Origin Seminyak also received remote maintenance support from SensorFlow’s Customer Success Manager who assisted in identifying and alerting underperforming A/C units across all Origin Seminyak’s rooms for the operational staff to conduct immediate and timely maintenance for those specific A/C units. As a result, the property managed to optimise its HVAC system performance efficiency by 33%. With SensorFlow, the operational team can now move away from regular, property-wide maintenance, towards smarter and more efficient maintenance strategies whereby they can selectively attend to rooms only when needed. Ultimately, Origin Seminyak could maximise the efficiency and productivity of their limited operational team during this challenging COVID-19 period
As the travel and hospitality industry recovers, InSitu Asia is looking to promote long-term rentals to attract occupancies within these three villas as a strategy to further maximise energy savings with SensorFlow’s solution.
InSitu Asia strongly believes in the added value of SensorFlow’s in-depth analyses on daily guest occupancy and A/C setpoint trends, on top of other critical and actionable property data and insights. The extensive data insights and analysis collected over time will significantly enhance their ability to provide excellent guest experiences and further advance their hotels’ operational standards for years to come.