GE Lighting Leads New Hotel Lighting Trends in 2014

With the rapid development of China's economy and the advancement of urbanization, several major cities have become commercial and tourism centers for all of Asia. This has driven unprecedented growth in the hotel industry, with more and more luxury hotels being built to provide guests with top-tier luxury experiences. As raising environmental awareness is now a global consensus, internationally leading GE Lighting, with its green concept and outstanding lighting solutions, has gained valuable opportunities to collaborate with the hotel industry, providing these hotels with the best eco-friendly and energy-saving options to enhance their brand image.

According to the relevant national energy report of 2010: lighting accounts for as much as 20% of the total electricity consumption in hotels. For hotel operators, this undoubtedly represents a favorable financial incentive and a sound business starting point. Changes in lighting solutions not only benefit guests but also bring better energy-saving effects to hotels. More importantly, any changes in lighting solutions will create a comfortable atmosphere for guests while also showcasing the hotel's premium brand positioning and helping to establish a strong reputation.

Against this backdrop, GE Lighting is leading the main development direction of the hotel lighting market in 2014:

LED technology heralds the end of the incandescent era

In recent years, hotels in China have begun to fully adopt new lighting technologies. The emergence of LED lighting has beautified the entire hotel environment, and switching from the original inefficient energy-consuming lighting to LED lighting solutions has brought huge benefits to hotels, including significantly reducing energy consumption, lowering operating costs, and increasing operating profits. From lobbies to guest rooms, as well as conference rooms, restaurants, and bars, the advanced and longer-lasting LED technology meets hotels' new requirements for environmental protection and energy saving, while also providing excellent lighting quality for various spaces in the hotel.

Compared with incandescent and compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), although light-emitting diodes (LED) are more expensive, LED lamps are more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. CFL bulbs have a service life of about 6 months, are 10 times that of ordinary incandescent bulbs, and save 75% more energy than incandescent bulbs; while LEDs consume even less energy and have a lifespan of up to 50,000 hours. At present, different styles of CFL or LED lamps on the market are suitable for most luminaires, allowing hotel operators to more conveniently reduce energy consumption and maintenance costs while providing more aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable lighting effects.

Multi-functional hotel space layouts

Integrating other architectural elements such as galleries or restaurants into one's own architectural decoration style has now become a new trend in the hotel industry. As the architectural style of hotels evolves, the corresponding lighting design will also change accordingly, in order to create a unique and appropriate lighting atmosphere that better suits the hotel's brand image and architectural style.

At the same time, hotels will reserve more space for conference and business functions. As part of this transformation, it is extremely important to meet the lighting needs of these professional audiovisual environments, such as the lighting requirements of video conferencing venues.

A comprehensive and multi-level lighting solution will deliver the ideal lighting environment, lighting function and lighting goals, to create appropriate and aesthetically pleasing lighting effects for the venue and space to the greatest extent. This diversified lighting solution also allows guests to better control the lighting.

One method to conveniently create appropriate space lighting at any time is to use lighting control sensors integrated with wireless lighting sensors for daylight harvesting. This method provides lighting only when needed, reduces energy consumption costs, and helps avoid over-lighting waste. Wireless sensors reduce the time and cost of installing running wires in hidden indoor locations (such as behind walls and ceilings), and make it easy to reconfigure spaces in the future.

With the development of sensors and more advanced energy-saving technologies, hotel operators are also exploring how to more fully integrate lighting into the overall building system. Today, in many hotels, simply inserting a room card into the control switch activates the lighting system, water heater, air conditioning, and even the radio or TV in the room. This simple change reduces a great deal of energy waste generated by related equipment remaining in standby mode while rooms are unoccupied. And this is just one of the many ways in which system automation can assist in saving energy.

"Although there are currently many new trends driving lighting design in the hotel sector, overall lighting solutions must still take into account the different characteristics and unique geographic locations of each hotel chain. Lighting plays a very important role in hotel layout, and a warm and welcoming lighting atmosphere can make guests feel the hotel's positive brand image. However, knowing when and how to invest in hotel lighting is not an easy matter," said Henry Eng, President and CEO of GE Lighting Asia Pacific.

GE Lighting is a globally leading lighting solutions provider. It offers a comprehensive range of lighting and lighting control products as well as high-quality lighting systems, aimed at creating unique green and environmentally friendly lighting solutions for hotel spaces of various styles. Domestically, GE Lighting has a nationwide distribution network for customer convenience. In addition to dealers, GE Lighting also has its own professional after-sales service team to meet different after-sales service needs. In addition, as a value-added service, hotels can engage in contract energy management cooperation with GE Lighting to address concerns about large upfront capital investments, in order to achieve the ideal effect of green environmental protection and energy conservation.

　　Hu Guangfa, General Manager of GE Lighting Greater China, explained that "GE Lighting can also provide free and professional lighting audits for hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues and conference centers, to help clients come up with a complete set of green, environmentally friendly and impressive LED lighting solutions. A comprehensive lighting audit takes a holistic view of the hotel space, including its long-term business and energy efficiency goals, as well as the daily use of existing luminaires. To date, many hotels have benefited greatly from cooperating with GE Lighting, including the Courtyard by Marriott Shanghai Puxi and Kempinski Suzhou in China, the Sultan Palace Square Hotel in Indonesia, as well as the leading Asian chain hotel Tune Hotels."