Premier Inn is the UK’s leading hotel chain with over 700 hotels in the UK and 59,000 rooms. They have a core focus on comfort, quality and sustainability, which makes them a perfect collaborator for XCO2 in the Hotel and Resort sector. The company’s work with Premier Inn over the last couple of years has included Environmental Design, MEP Engineering and Operational Performance Assessment.
XCO2’s first collaboration was in the design of a new concept hotel and restaurant, which was intended to attain a Display Energy Certificate (DEC) A Rating, integrating a broad array of passive design measures alongside intuitive controls and sensibly sized building services to drive down operational energy and water consumption. The detailed design of the mechanical and electrical building services was undertaken for the project, in conjunction with environmental design guidance, dynamic predictive modelling and soft landings guidance in order to ensure an operational focus from day one onwards.
As part of an on-going array of work XCO2 were appointed to carry out Energy Audit work in order to develop an improvement strategy for the existing hotel and restaurant buildings at various sites.
The audits focussed on performance and control of the HVAC and lighting systems. In each case a walk-around survey was carried out to identify the condition of the building services; interviews with the restaurant and hotel managers were conducted to better understand and reveal building performance related issues; the data was then combined and information was gleaned from the observations made alongside analysis of the hotel and restaurant’s energy consumption in order to identify areas in which significant improvements could be made.
More recently XCO2 have undertaken a Building Performance Evaluation on the first Hub by Premier Inn. Hub is a new concept within the hospitality sector, featuring smartly designed, compact hotel rooms located at prime locations aimed at guests focussed on comfort and technology. The BPE was carried out in order to assess the performance of the building, make recommendations based on the first year of operation and highlight any lessons learned that could be applied to new Hub properties.
