Introducing natural ventilation in selected Malaysian Hotels for environmental sustainability

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Date
2009-07
Authors
Azusa Ikeda
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Shortage of natural resources and environmental poftutions are considered as signs of global warming and a serious world climatic threat in the last few decades. Hence, environmental conservation has been increasing important to all sectors of the economy for the countries. Though there are many tourism authorities that have created the standards or certifications for environmentally sustainable hotels, very few Malaysia hotels have policies addressing the issues. This study aims to define the current state of environmental policy in Malaysian hotel industry, and proposing the effective and practical method for Malaysian environmental hotels. This is an exploratory research in applying passive building design in the aspect of natural ventilation as one of the significant and effective method in attempting at reducing energy in hotels. The case study conducted tested efficiency of natural ventilation as one ofthe passive elements, for beach hotels and hilltop hotels. The air temperature, relative humidity and wind velocity were observed by using BABUK environmental logger and Standard Effective Temperature (SET) is calculated from the three air factors in order to compare with comfortable temperature for Malaysia. Condusions from the research proved the hypothesis that the use of natural ventilation in public spaces, hotel lobbies in particular can reduce energy without compromising on comfort. Questionnaire survey and field survey were carried out to grasp the present condition of Malaysian hotels whilst doing comparative studies on wortd standards from the literature review. Findings of this study show that Malaysian hotels lacked in consideration and knowledge for envirormentally sustainability with ineffective use of medlanical equipments and systems. This study is concluded with the suggestions that (1) Malaysian hotel industry requires setting up environmental guidelines and/or certification to improve its sustainability and provide knowledge and skills of environmental programs, (2) manipulation of passive building design elemens to improve environmental sustainability for hotel industry, therefore the guidelines created should have this consideration as a priority.
Description
Keywords
Natural ventilation , Malaysian Hotels , Environmental sustainability
Citation