Iberostar Adopts AI to Cut Energy Usage and Enhance Guest Experience

In line with its objective of achieving carbon neutrality in 2030, which is 20 years before the industry's target, Iberostar Hotels & Resorts has taken another step in its decarbonization strategy.

Iberostar says it has joined the Sener engineering and technology group to create BRAIAN, a solution based on artificial intelligence that enables hotels to improve their energy performance by optimizing the air-conditioning system, their main energy consumer.

BRAIAN (a play on the words brain and artificial intelligence) is geared towards the company's commitment to climate action, a key focus area of the Iberostar Wave of Change movement. Official said BRAIAN addresses two objectives: achieving energy savings of 35%, and a reduction of 85% of scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, while ensuring an excellent experience for its guests.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, BRAIAN manages to predict more precisely the energy performance of hotels and optimize their operation by means of a system that anticipates needs for the purpose of better decision-making. As a result, the tool centralizes and analyzes energy data from different variables of the chain's management systems, such as the hotel's control system or BMS and the hotel's occupation in a given period or PMS, and other external data, such as the weather forecast, in order to integrate them into a single platform.

For example, this system allows anticipating the flow of guests in a specific area and adjusting its air-conditioning beforehand, thus helping to save energy while ensuring a higher degree of thermal comfort. BRAIAN can also perform as a virtual operator working hand in hand with the hotels' technical service professionals, simplifying their daily work.

The tool, which will soon be operational at the Iberostar Selection Cancun (Mexico), is already available in some hotels in Spain: Iberostar Waves Royal Andalus (Cádiz), Iberostar Waves Alcudia Park and Iberostar Selection Playa de Palma (Mallorca).

This operator is based on a solution previously developed by Sener, Respira®, designed to centralize and analyze energy data. Respira® has already been successfully deployed in infrastructures such as metros or airports, for example, in the air conditioning systems of Manises airport, in Valencia, or in the Barcelona Metro.

Álvaro Sánchez López, Global Director of Sustainability, Integration and Impact at Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, states that “this project represents our commitment to innovation, sustainability and providing our customers with an excellent experience. We have a solid roadmap for the decarbonization of our operations, and BRAIAN contributes on this path. We highly value the support it offers to our maintenance staff”.