Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments:

1. Title - The paper is only based a review of only 25 articles. The selection of these articles was very restrictive, if not biased. On this basis, the paper title should be “… selective review” instead of “… systematic review”. But then the contribution of a “selective review” is questionable.
2. Abstract – The expression “That’s” is informal, which should not be used in academic papers.
3. Methods – The selection criteria for the articles reviewed are too restrictive. For instance, the selected articles need to be not reviews of other articles, not for the entire hotel, etc. In this way, many of the past relevant articles, which provided useful information and insights, would have been excluded.
4. Some of the reviewed articles were published ages ago, e.g. in 1996 and 1999. Few are recent articles.
5. Five of the 25 reviewed articles are congress proceedings, which, in many cases, are preliminary works for journal papers. For a high quality review, credible journal articles (rather than congress or conference papers) should be covered.
6. The findings, such as the most used indicator was the “Total average energy use index” measured in kilowatts hour per square meter per year (kWh / m2 year); surveys and energy audits are the most used methods to collect data; hotels in the tropics tend to consume more energy than those located in temperate zones, with 4 and 5 stars consuming the most energy; hotels in the tropics consume mainly electric power, which is linked to the use of air conditioning; etc. are all well known. I can’t see any new knowledge from this paper.
7. The paper needs an overhaul to improve its contents. To do so, I would suggest that a lot more literature, especially those published in three key journals of this area (International Journal of Hospitality Management, Energy and Buildings, Sustainable Cities and Society) between 2000 and 2020. A quick search found the following highly relevant articles (as examples):
   1. Ying Sheng, Zhuangzhuang Miao, Jingyu Zhang, Xueyin Lin, Hongting Ma, Energy consumption model and energy benchmarks of five-star hotels in China, Energy and Buildings, Volume 165, 2018, Pages 286-292.
   2. Joseph H.K. Lai, Energy use and maintenance costs of upmarket hotels, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Volume 56, 2016, Pages 33-43.

Author Response

Note: We have highlighted all the changes using the Track Changes, into the manuscript.

• Reviewer 1

1. Title - Energy Efficiency in Hotel Buildings: How it is measured?
2. Abstract – We have already corrected the abstract.
3. Methods – The selection critera for these 26 scientific publications was in this way, since only publications that measures energy in all areas of the hotel buildings were considered, and not only specific areas. Due to this we only work with these 26 publications.
4. The oldest publication in this review is from the year 1995, since we wanted to know when these indicators began to be used. For this reason we have publications since 1995.
5. At the end we only have 4 Congress Proceedings Reports, and we decided to consider them for this study, since there were few original scientific papers, and they also publised the information with the criteria of this study.
6. The importance for us of this review is to identify the most used indicators to measure energy efficiency in hotel buildings.
7. We reviewed these journal, and we found that the:
8. Qi, X. Li, H.L. A Systematic Method to Evaluate Energy PErformance of Five-star Hotel Buildings in China. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Building Efficiency and Sustainable Technologies, IEEE ICBEST 2015; 2015; pp. 107–112.

Is now an original scientific paper, and we have already modified it in this manuscript, now is:

Sheng, Y.; Miao, Z.; Zhang, J.; Lin, X.; Ma, H. Energy consumption model and energy benchmarks of five-star hotels in China. Energy Build. 2018, 165, 286–292.

 

And also, we find this other paper, which we have already included in this review.

Lai, J.H.K. Energy use and maintenance costs of upmarket hotels. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 2016, 56, 33–43.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. In addition to the information presented in Fig. 6 on pg. 7, it would be useful to know, how the breakdown of end-use energy consumption among services and systems within these hotels classes have been? e.g. a chart describing avg. energy-use for major end-uses (e.g. cooling/heating, ventilations, elevators, lighting, safety/security systems) for each hotel class in these two climatic zones.
2. Fig. 7 is redundant, meaningless, and rather confusing. Consider revising or removing instead.

3. What are the energy labels or sustainability ratings of these studied hotels ? What design or management features are implemented in such hotels? e.g. rooftop PV, solar PV water heaters.

4. Identify and possibly list some of best practices these hotels (especially, 5 Star) have implemented that makes consumes less energy than 4 Star counterparts.

5. Since EUI normalizes energy-use against gross floor area, one would expect similar EUI. Otherwise, authors should explain why there is a significant different between low-star and high-star rated hotels. This is an important observation which is missing in this study.

6. Relationship between hotel classification made in the conclusion is quite obvious. The study should be able to report it with more sound analysis of breakdown in energy-usage and perhaps present ways to conserve the energy-efficiency among those end-use services identified.

    

7. Since hotels in temperate climates use thermal energy to heat instead of electricity, perhaps, this study should be able to define/hint what is the better measure of energy performance of hotels, especially when comparison is made across climatic zones, since they neglect thermal energy use consumed, which in my opinion should be accounted in total energy-usage when making such a comparison.

8. Introduction/Background to this study is shallow. Perhaps, authors could include sections that describes similar studies e.g. how are energy benchmarking done so far? what are their findings? shortcomings? how different is to this study?

9. Additional References:

   1. Energy Benchmarking by EnergyStar http://www.energystar.gov/hospitality

   2. Hotel benchmarking for energy, water and carbon https://www.cabi.org/leisuretourism/news/65047 

   3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2012.02.001
   4. ENERGY PERFORMANCE OF HOTEL BUILDINGS  https://core.ac.uk/reader/48638980 

 

Author Response

Note: We have highlighted all the changes using the Track Changes, into the manuscript.

• Reviewer 2

1. This that you suggest is very useful iformation, but it would be recommended for another publication, since in this review the main focus is on determining the indicators that measure energy efficiency. And we do not want to deviate from the main objective of this review.
2. We consider that figure 7 provides different information than figure 6, and that it is contributing to the main focus of this work. Therefore, we consider it pertinent to keep it within this review.
3. We do not consider these parameters, as they are not within the scope of this review, but we may consider them for another publication.
4. The reason for this behavior was that the 4-star hotels studied were older than 20 years, so most of their HVCA systems and electrical installations were obsolete, which caused reduced performance and high energy consumption (Biantoro, 2018).
5. What you suggest is interesting, but it is not contemplated in the objectives of this study. And yes, the hotel is of a low category, it will have less energy consumption.
6. We have already corrected the conclusion, and it is already in accordance with the objectives of this work.
7. Almost all the articles reviewed have antecedents that mention previous studies, with some values of the indicators used, so it was not considered to repeat this information. This article tries to focus the reader on the way in which the energy efficiency of hotel buildings is measured, since when there are publications on the subject and what EUI values of hotel buildings have been reported for the various regions of the world.
8. In accordance with the criteria of this work, we have included the following publication:

Chan, W. Energy benchmarking in support of low carbon hotels: Developments, challenges, and approaches in China. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 2012, 31, 1130–1142.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

(The authors cited my paper, which I am not sure would constitute any potential conflict of interest or not.)

The authors have address most of my comments. However, the new paper title "... How it is measured" is followed by a question mark, which I think is not proper.  

I have reservations on the language quality of this paper. For example:

(1) "... in US 64% and in Spain the 85%" should be "... in US 64% and in Spain 85%". 

(2) There are problems with the sentence "The above contributes that the hotels generating large amounts of CO2, which lead to negative ..." in terms of sentence structure and grammar. Please revise.

The above are just two examples. The rest of the paper needs to be proofread and improved.

Author Response

Comments to reviewer:

Note: We have highlighted all the changes using the Track Changes, into the manuscript.

1. The authors cited my paper, which I am not sure would constitute any potential conflict of interest or not.

• All the papers that we have cited are relevant to the purpose of this review. And we believe that there is no conflict of interest, since we do not know you, either that you would be our reviewer.

 

2. The authors have address most of my comments. However, the new paper title "... How it is measured" is followed by a question mark, which I think is not proper.  

• We have modified the title:

Energy Efficiency Indicators for Hotel Buildings

 

3. I have reservations on the language quality of this paper.

• We have sent this manuscript to MDPI English Editing. And they have sent us the English Editing Certificate, that we send you.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx