Commercial EPCs are required on all properties being newly let or sold, and hotels are no exception. There are a few things that make hotels a bit different to surveying an office or a warehouse however.

Ensuring access to the property

Hotels are often full of guests! This particular hotel was no different and it was therefore tricky to organise access to enough of the bedrooms to be able to gather the required evidence for the EPC. Fortunately, there were enough vacant rooms to be able to get a good idea of the rooms in the hotel, and a good set of plans that we could work from to work out the dimensions of the occupied rooms. Plans are really crucial for this type of commercial EPC, so we really suggest these are made available prior to the visit.

Zoning a hotel for a commercial EPC

For those that have no understanding of how an EPC is put together – different areas of a building are ‘zoned’, and entered into the software separately. So a bedroom would be input as one zone, whilst a bathroom, reception area, or utility room would be input as another. Hotels have lots of separate bathroom and bedroom units that are often not able to be grouped together, and this can make them very time consuming and expensive to create an EPC for. Prices for larger hotels can often exceed the thousand pounds mark because of this, and it has been known to take 3 or 4 days to pull together all the data in the office following the site visit.

EPC Ratings for Hotels

This particular property had just been newly refurbished, and as a result achieved a reasonably high rating. Hotels with a good quality HVAC system and energy efficient and insulated hot water heating will benefit hugely in the final rating. Whilst lighting will also be important, considering many hotels are 24 hour buildings with the lights on all night and in high use. Intelligent lighting controls and photoelectric sensors are also a really good option for improving your rating.

This particular hotel had new windows fitted and refurbished bedrooms as well. A good time to get a new EPC on the property.

If you would like a quote for a hotel EPC, just give us a call and have the plans of the property handy to email us. We have carried out EPCs on several big hotels in London, so are used to dealing with this scale of job, but it is absolutely paramount that the customer is able to assist with access and documentation to ensure that the EPC process runs smoothly and that your property gets the rating it deserves.