34|REPORTAJE ME MADRID “There are no excuses noT To opTimize lighTing sysTems” “Not only LED solutions help to reduce the energy bill of the hotels. The light bulbs are also a cheap and effective option’, said to iCandela Oscar Alonso, Head of the Department of Energy Effi- ciency and Sustainability of ITH. ‘In any case, what hotels should do is assess their initial needs and circumstances, to assess what lighting options fit most and will be most effective. For example, for the common areas, LED lamps offer quicker returns, but in a room in which the bulbs are used less frequently, there are less expensive solutions that provide adequate results. In addition, lighting controls have many years with us, with very positive results with incandes- cent or low consumption, and when combined with LED tech- nology, its effect is multiplied’. For Alonso, ‘in any case, con- sidering it is a field where it is very easy to operate, with limi- ted investments, with immediate results, and multiple options on the market, there are no excuses not to optimize lighting systems. What matters is that the hotel industry has the information needed to make better operatio- nal decisions, and this is the task that ITH develops”. The ME Hotel in Madrid is also an example of how a historic building can achieve energy efficiency without compro- mising their architectural peculiarities. This hotel is part of the Meliá Hotels International, which in 2008 joined trans- versally in all areas of the company a Global Sustainability Policy, sensitive to the need to ensure a balance between economic growth, a responsible management of resources and the cultural diversity, and is also the only company in the sector certified as a Biosphere Hotel company-UNESCO and the first hotel company included in the index ‘responsi- ble’ by the Spanish stock FTSE4Good Ibex. This property is an example of sustainability policies undertaken by Meliá Hotels International chain, among which we can mention the change of conventional lamps by LEDs or traditional fuels by natural gas; air conditioning systems with heat / cold by geothermal technology, solar panels installation for ACS heating and pool heating; implementing ma- nagement systems and the use of integrated telemetry water cycle where waste water is reused both for irrigation of gardens and to refill cisterns to reuse in toilets. ■