Passive House Hotel.

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Contents

Introduction        

Hotel        

Overview        

History        

Zero Energy Balance        

An “instabus” system        

Solar panels and photovoltaic panels        

Heat water pump /Water        

Passive house        

Recycling and Upcycling        

Recycling        

Upcycling        

Economics        

Awards        

Conclusion        

References        

Introduction

All the changes are transitional, they begin little by little and then suddenly you realize that the whole way in which an industry moves has changed.

The “Smart Building” concept is still a very new idea for most of the constructors, it is seen as a plus and no as a must; but this approach will definitely change in the next 15 years.

The ones who are now taking the risk in investing extra both money and effort to make their buildings “smart” are already being paid either by international awards or by the consumer’s preference.
        This has been proved by the Boston Consulting Group, who found out that a 67% of the companies participating in the survey recognize that taking into account the sustainability sector is not just and add-on, but a necessity in order to be competitive within the market.

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*Fig 1: Boston Consulting Group annual report 2012.

This fact has been realized by Michaela Reitterer, who is the owner and the CEO of the Boutique Hotel Staadthalle, located in the 15th district of the city of Vienna in Austria. This hotel is an excellent example of how things can be done different in a stablished economic sector and how this changes bring nothing more than recognitions and awards which is shown in the prosperity of the business.

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[pic 5]During the course “Smart Building – Study Trip” we spent a night in the Boutique Hotel Staadthalle, and we had an informative tour provided by the hotel personal. In this report is written the results and impressions from this experience.

Hotel

Overview

The Boutique Hotel Staadthalle is located in the city of Vienna, Austria; near from Vienna’s Westbahnhof train station.

This is a three-star hotel that is composed of two buildings, it offers 79 rooms, each of which has a different design, some of them under the “upcycling” concept. The rooms are located in two contiguous buildings, one of the buildings is from the 19th century and the other one has been totally rebuild and is known as the passive house, the distribution of the rooms is:

• Parent building: 42 rooms on 4 floors
• Passive house: 38 rooms on 5 floors plus the top floor with 2 junior suites and terraces overlooking Vienna

In the hotel there is also found a lavender garden in the roof of the building, where they produce bio-organic products such as soaps and cosmetics.

There are thousands of hotels in the city of Vienna, but the Boutique Hotel Staadthalle is the first one in Vienna and in the world that has a zero energy balance, the hotel has several sustainable friendly ways of producing energy which has lead it to be the first hotel in Vienna to be awarded with the EU eco-label as well as the first one in receiving the eco-label of the Austrian Republic. Among these prizes there are also many recognitions within the tourism sector for the good service that is found in the Boutique Hotel Staadthalle.

Besides the energy production system that the hotel has, it also offers several other particularities, some of them are:

• The green points found in each room, in which is explained how they are saving resources and how the guest can also help in this efforts.
• Only organic and local products are served in the breakfast.
• 10% of discount in the hotel rates if the guest arrives by train or by bicycle.

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History

The Reitterer family has owned the Boutique Hotel Staadthalle for three generations, it used to have only 42 rooms in the 19th century building. But when the hotel became property of Michaela Reitterer, she decided to keep with the family business however with some big changes, as she had studied a bachelor in tourism from the year 2002 on the changes began.

First of all from the year 2002 to 2007 she began to develop eco-practices in the old hotel, beginning from installing a proper recycling system to change the lightning system for a more expensive and sustainable friendly one, with these actions the hotel was awarded in 2007 with the EU Ecolabel.

While these changes were taking place, Michaela was planning to buy the neighbor building and make out a passive house of it. After much work and research in 2009 the hotel reopened with the addition of 38 rooms and 2 suites, and also included 130m² of solar panels, 93 m² of photovoltaic panels and a water heat pump.

Nowadays the hotel reached an average occupancy of 83% and an average rate well above the 3* standard in Vienna in its second year after reopening. [pic 9]

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Zero Energy Balance

The Boutique Hotel Staadthalle is the first hotel in the world with a zero-energy balance, this means that it generates as much energy as is needed to run the hotel.

The energy generation is made through the 130m² of solar panels and 93 m² of photovoltaic panels, so the energy generation is continuous, and when there is an excess in the generation that the hotel requirements the additional energy is send to the public system and is taken back when needed, in this way the hotel does not have to have a facility to storage the extra energy they might produce. With this process running continuously at the end of the year the balance is zero.

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