S.O.L.E.H. (Sustainable Operation Low-cost Energy for Hotels). Innovative tools and guidelines for the sustainable hotels' refurbishment

The target of the “Road Map of Efficient Europe” is to refurbish the buildings stock of the second half of the 20th century that is responsible of the 41% of energy consumption - the 2/3 of this consumption are spent for heating and cooling - with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and consumption of raw materials. One of the sectors of the building stock that needs an upgrading for what concern building performances and consumption is the tourism, and in particular hotel buildings that often are in a state of obsolescent because they have failed to update to contemporary comfort requirements. The research that will be presented in this paper with the name “S.O.L.E.H. (Sustainable Operation Low-cost Energy for Hotels)” aims to identify innovative tools and providing guidelines for hotels refurbishment within a framework of environmental and economic sustainability thanks to the exchange of know-how among Italy and Greece. The project’s goals are: to identify innovative solutions by stimulating the targeted use of technological tools, to take care of communication for the stakeholder; to make the hotel building stock more efficient and the tourism industry more competitive; to refurbish existing buildings with a view to sustainability and circular economy. The project is a collaboration between Universities of Padua, Venice and Thessaly and it was funded with European Structural Funds. It introduces Innovative and Smart Technologies for the survey, processing and visualization of buildings data, based on the analysis of case-studies from Italy and Greece, and then it proposes a tool for the refurbishment of existing hotel with the support of a communication framework in order to sensibilize stakeholders. Finally, the research concludes with a workshop organized at the University of Thessaly with the scope to investigate alternative solutions of tourism models in order to sensibilize users towards more sustainable and ecologic habits.