The Green Mirror: How Digital Twins Are Powering the Sustainable Smart Hotel

Prateksha Mohan is the recipient of first place in the HFTP Fall 2025 Blog Competition. In her captivating article “The Green Mirror: How Digital Twins Are Powering the Sustainable Smart Hotel” Mohan dissects how Digital twins are transforming the hospitality industry by giving hotels the ability to visualize, predict, and optimize their environmental impact before a single guest even arrives.

What is a Digital Twin?

A digital twin is a dynamic, data-driven virtual replica of a physical space or system. Linked to IoT sensors and driven by AI, it continuously mirrors real-world performance – evaluating energy usage, equipment efficiency, and guest comfort in real time (Segura-Cedres et al., 2025). In the hospitality sector, digital twins are transforming properties into dynamic ecosystems that learn and adapt. They simulate how design choices, occupancy rates, or maintenance decisions impact a hotel’s environmental footprint, enabling operators to anticipate problems and optimize sustainability well before challenges occur (Sarode & Ghosh, 2025; Ramnarayan et al., 2023).

Designing Greener Hotels Before Construction

Sustainability has traditionally been an afterthought in hotel development, but digital twins bring it to the forefront. Architects now utilize Building Information Modeling (BIM) and twin simulations to evaluate numerous eco-friendly scenarios prior to the start of construction. They have the ability to simulate solar exposure, air circulation, and insulation to minimize future energy consumption, or test materials to see how they impact long-term performance (Chan, 2025).

For instance, turning a building’s wing by fifteen degrees could decrease yearly energy use by 12%. These insights assist teams in creating hotels that are efficient from the start – minimizing waste, emissions, and expenses. By virtually experimenting with sustainable materials and designs, hotels can prevent costly renovations in the future. Digital twins transform sustainability from a reactive adjustment into a deliberate design strategy (Ramnarayan et al., 2023).

Smarter Operations Through Real-Time Optimization

After a hotel launches, its digital twin transforms into a continuous feedback system – a “living control room” that tracks and optimizes performance around the clock. IoT sensors deliver information on temperature, humidity, water flow, and occupancy to the twin. The system subsequently examines this data to identify inefficiencies and make real-time adjustments:

• Modifying HVAC according to real-time room occupancy to minimize waste.

• Identifying initial indicators of equipment malfunction to avoid expensive outages.

• Adjusting lighting and elevator operation based on occupancy variations.

This constant loop of sensing and optimizing significantly reduce energy consumption, extend equipment lifespan, and reduce carbon emissions dramatically. The transparency of data it offers is also highly valuable. Digital twins can automatically produce comprehensive ESG performance reports – encompassing energy and water conservation, waste management, and air quality. Advancements in sustainability are no longer just a claim; they represent a validated flow of data observable to owners, investors, and guests (HospitalityTech, 2024).

Turning Sustainability into Financial Advantage

Digital twins make sustainability quantifiable – and quantifiable sustainability attracts capital. Predictive maintenance minimizes downtime and prolongs asset lifespan, while accurate data supports access to green financing and carbon credits (Chan, 2025). In 2023, a Hilton pilot project in the UK employed a digital twin model to replicate energy flow and achieved nearly a 30% reduction in consumption (Hilton & ei³, n.d.). These findings bolstered its case for green bond financing – demonstrating how sustainability analytics can become a financial asset.

For asset managers and hotel groups, portfolio-level twins facilitate benchmarking among properties, pinpointing inefficiencies, and modeling the ROI of sustainability upgrades prior to execution (Sarode & Ghosh, 2025). In a market increasingly influenced by ESG reporting, performance supported by data is not only responsible – it’s lucrative.

Guests and the New Transparency

Digital twins also bring sustainability closer to guests. Modern travelers seek transparency instead of assurances. A hotel might display real-time energy and water savings in the lobby or illustrate how towel reuse contributes to conservation targets via a mobile application. This involvement shifts sustainability from a behind-the-scenes initiative to a collective experience, enriching guests’ emotional ties to the brand. It transforms sustainability into a narrative – one based on real live data rather than marketing slogans.

The Future: From Smart to Conscious Hotels

In the coming decade, digital twins will progress from single-property tools to sustainability platforms that encompass entire portfolios. Hotel firms might utilize them to model regional climate effects, evaluate renewable energy integration, or predict carbon neutrality timelines.

With the progress of artificial intelligence, these systems will shift to being prescriptive instead of reactive – recommending optimal measures and actions to achieve sustainability targets faster. Essentially, hotels will become conscious ecosystems that monitor and control their environmental impact in real time. In this day and age, what cannot be quantified cannot be controlled – and today, almost everything can be measured.

The Hotel That Embodies Its Principles

Digital twins go beyond being virtual replicas; they are reflections of how effectively a hotel functions. They bridge the gap between sustainability goals with execution – translating purpose into quantifiable results. The hotels that will succeed in the next decade will not only provide stunning design or flawless service but will also operate in harmony with their digital counterparts – enhancing energy efficiency, minimizing waste, and reporting sustainability with precision. In the era of the Sustainable Smart Hotel, the greenest property may not be the one we can see – but the one we’ve built in data.

This blog post was awarded First Place in the Fall 2025 HFTP/MS Global Hospitality Business Graduate Student Blog Competition presented by the HFTP Foundation. Participants are students participating in the Master of Science in Global Hospitality Business, a partnership between the Conrad N. Hilton College of Global Hospitality Leadership at the University of Houston, the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and EHL. The blog posts that received the top scores will be published on HFTP Connect. Learn more at HFTP News.

Prateksha Mohan is a graduate student in Global Hospitality Business with a focus on operations, marketing, and technology-driven solutions in the hospitality industry. She has conducted research on quality service management, guest experience optimization, and innovative membership programs for leading online travel platforms in Asia. Through internships and field projects across luxury hotels, hotel groups, and hospitality consulting firms, Prateksha explores how data-driven strategies and operational best practices can enhance efficiency, guest satisfaction, and overall business performance. She is passionate about bridging academic insights with real-world applications to drive innovation and excellence in hospitality management.

References

Chan, A. T. K. (2025). Digital twin for sustainable hospitality facilities. Cambridge Repository.

Hilton, & ei³. (n.d.). Hilton’s AI-driven energy management case study: 30% emissions and waste reduction, 20% resource use reduction [Case study]. ei³.

HospitalityTech. (2024). Why hotel brands are turning to digital twins to solve their toughest operational challenges.

NeuronCloud. (2024). Digital twin for hotels: Unlocking visual data to power sustainable hospitality.

Ramnarayan, R., Singh, R., Gehlot, A., Joshi, K., Ibrahim, A. O., Abulfaraj, A. W., Binzagr, F., & Bharany, S. (2023). Imperative role of digital twin in the management of hospitality services. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 14(9), 529–537.

Sarode, A. V., & Ghosh, B. (2025). Digital twins in hospitality: A conceptual model for enhancing guest experience and operational efficiency. IIP Series.

Segura-Cedres, M., Pérez de la Rosa, J. O., Villalobos, J., & Martínez, S. (2025). An ontology proposal for implementing digital twins in hotel reception areas. Sensors, 25(14).

Snapfix. (2024). Predictive maintenance using digital twins in hotels.

10minHotel. (2025). From kitchens to conference rooms: How digital twins are redefining operational efficiency in hospitality.

World BI. (n.d.). The role of digital twins in hotel management.

This article originally appeared on HFTP.