Most businesses can turn things off at closing time. You cannot. A hotel or a guest house holds bedrooms, corridors and hot water at temperature through the night, turns over linen from every checkout, and starts a kitchen before most other businesses have unlocked the door. Heating and hot water alone are usually more than 60 percent of an accommodation energy bill, and both of them run at half occupancy exactly as they run when you are sold out.
That load shape is why the contract you sit on matters far more here than it does for a nine to five business. If your unit rate is wrong, it is wrong on a very large number of units, every day of the year.
The short version. Published UK benchmarks put accommodation businesses at roughly 25,000 to 215,000 kWh of electricity and 45,000 to 390,000 kWh of gas a year, which works out at about £9,800 to £81,400. Heating, hot water and laundry are the bulk of it. The single most common reason an accommodation business overpays is not the equipment, it is a contract that quietly rolled onto deemed or out of contract rates. Those figures are estimates from published benchmarks, not quotes.
Where the kWh actually go
Priced at the assumptions we use across this site, 25p per kWh for electricity, 7p per kWh for gas and around £365 a year in standing charges, the main loads in accommodation land roughly here. The ranges are wide because a six room B&B and a forty room hotel with a pool are not the same animal.
- Gas boilers and space heating. 60,000 to 320,000 kWh a year, about £4,200 to £22,400. Almost always the biggest single line.
- Central hot water plant and calorifiers. 25,000 to 120,000 kWh, about £1,750 to £8,400. Held hot around the clock because guests shower whenever they like.
- Commercial laundry. 8,000 to 45,000 kWh, about £2,000 to £11,250. Drying is the expensive half, at roughly 1.5 to 3 kWh for every kilo of linen, so on electricity that is about 38p to 75p a kilo before you have washed anything.
- Breakfast and restaurant kitchen. 15,000 to 60,000 kWh across both fuels, about £2,700 to £10,700.
- Guest room electrics, TVs and air conditioning. 12,000 to 70,000 kWh, about £3,000 to £17,500.
- Heated pool, spa or hot tubs. 20,000 to 90,000 kWh, about £2,500 to £16,000. A single hot tub at 3 to 7 kWh a day is roughly £275 to £640 a year on its own if you run it year round.
Add corridor and car park lighting, lifts, pumps and mechanical ventilation and you have a baseload that never really stops. Note the fuel split too. At 25p against 7p, electricity costs roughly three and a half times what gas does per kWh, which is why an all electric aparthotel or a glamping site feels the unit rate so much harder than a gas heated country inn.
Typical annual usage and bills by size
These are the published benchmark figures we use on our sector pages. They are typical and estimated, built from bedroom, pitch or apartment counts rather than from your meter, and they stay estimates until we see a bill.
| Business type | Electricity a year | Gas a year | Typical annual bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| B&B or guest house, 2 to 15 rooms | 12,000 to 55,000 kWh | 25,000 to 90,000 kWh | £5,100 to £20,400 |
| Inn or pub with rooms | 45,000 to 160,000 kWh | 60,000 to 220,000 kWh | £15,800 to £55,800 |
| Independent hotel, 10 to 100 rooms | 60,000 to 260,000 kWh | 90,000 to 300,000 kWh | £21,700 to £86,400 |
| Serviced apartments or aparthotel | 35,000 to 260,000 kWh | 0 to 140,000 kWh | £9,100 to £75,200 |
| Campsite, touring park or glamping | 18,000 to 180,000 kWh | 0 to 60,000 kWh | £4,900 to £49,600 |
| Holiday or caravan park | 80,000 to 450,000 kWh | 20,000 to 180,000 kWh | £21,800 to £125,500 |
Two things stand out. A B&B carries a bill that would frighten most high street retailers, and a holiday park that buys electricity for its statics can be spending more than a forty room hotel without ever letting a bedroom. On a park, 1,200 to 3,000 kWh a year for each static caravan is roughly £300 to £750 of electricity per van at 25p, so a hundred van park is buying £30,000 to £75,000 of power at a commercial rate it cannot mark up.
The contract traps that cost accommodation the most
Deemed and out of contract rates
When a fixed deal ends and nothing is agreed, the supplier does not cut you off. It moves you to a deemed or out of contract rate, which in 2026 typically sits 30 to 70 percent above a negotiated fixed deal. Nothing about your building changes, only the number on the bill. A large share of independent accommodation is sitting on exactly this without realising, because the bills still get paid by direct debit and nobody reads the covering letter in August.
Rollover and the notice window
The mirror image is a contract that renews itself. Some supply agreements roll into a fresh fixed term unless you give notice inside a fairly short window, and the renewal rate is rarely the sharp one. Find your contract end date on your latest bill and diarise it 6 to 12 months ahead, not 6 to 12 days.
Standing charges and the meters you forgot you had
Accommodation sites collect meters. An amenity block, a clubhouse, a pool plant room, a laundry, a cottage annexe, a shop, an old workshop. Each live supply point carries its own standing charge, and at around £365 a year that is roughly £2,190 across six supply points before a single unit is used. Dormant MPANs on parks and multi building hotels are common, and they bill quietly for years. List every supply number you hold and check that each one still serves something.
Seasonal profiles and half hourly data
If you trade a season rather than a year, a supplier that assumes a flat load will price defensively and pad the rate to protect itself. Tell whoever is quoting what your season actually looks like. And if your site is settled half hourly, ask your supplier for the data before you renew. It is the fastest way to see the overnight baseload most owners never realise they are paying for, and it changes which contract shape suits you.
Six things worth doing before you renew
Fixing the rate is the big lever, but consumption is worth attacking too, and these are the jobs that pay back fastest in accommodation specifically.
- Stop heating unsold rooms. Key card or occupancy control lets an empty room fall back to a setback temperature instead of running at full heat all night. On a midweek at 40 percent occupancy that is most of your bedroom heating doing nothing.
- Put hot water on a schedule. Build it around check in, breakfast and the evening shower peak rather than holding the cylinder flat out for 24 hours. On a smaller guest house, a cylinder jacket and a morning and evening burst is a cheap job with an immediate effect.
- Zone the heating. Bedroom floors, function rooms and public areas on separate timings beats one master clock. On an inn, put the guest bedroom circuit on its own timer so you are not heating six empty rooms through a quiet Tuesday.
- Run laundry in full loads and dry off peak. Drying is the most expensive stage of the cycle at 1.5 to 3 kWh a kilo, so half loads are the most expensive linen you will ever handle.
- Cover the water. An uncovered heated pool loses most of its heat straight off the surface, and a hot tub on an insulated cover with an eco setting between bookings costs a fraction of one left on full. Heating is the large majority of a tub's electricity use.
- Fix the always on stuff. Push button timed showers and PIR lighting in amenity and toilet blocks, LED with sensors in corridors, stairwells and car parks, and an annual service on the boiler and calorifier. A badly set boiler flow temperature wastes gas quietly all winter and nobody ever notices it on a bill.
When to switch, and how it works
The best time to look is 6 to 12 months before your contract ends. You can usually agree new rates ahead of the end date and hold them, which means you are not taking whatever the market is doing in the week your deal lapses. For a seasonal site, aim to have it settled before the season starts rather than in the middle of it. If you have already rolled onto deemed rates, that is not a reason to wait, it is the reason to move now.
Businesses that switch with us save 40 percent on average, typically 30 to 50 percent, and more if you're on out-of-contract or deemed rates. Those are estimates based on typical UK business energy spend and published market rates, and the 40% average is the business's own figure, not a published dataset. See how we estimate. Our best single result to date is 72 percent on one bill, for a business that had been left on a deemed rate for a long time. It is one bill, it is not typical, and we never present it as typical.
The process itself is deliberately dull. You send us one recent bill for each fuel, which gives us your meter numbers, your current unit rates, your standing charges and your contract end date. We compare the market across our supplier panel, including suppliers who price seasonal and multi meter sites properly rather than assuming a flat load. You see the prices and decide. The service is free to you because the supplier pays us, and there is no interruption to your supply at any point, because nothing physical changes. The same wires and the same pipes, a different name on the bill.
If you want a starting number before you dig the paperwork out, the accommodation energy guide has the benchmarks by business type, or you can get a free estimate for your site in about a minute.
Questions we get asked
How much does a hotel or B&B spend on energy a year?
It tracks bedrooms and pitches more than anything else. A 4 to 6 room B&B typically lands near £9,000 a year for gas and electricity combined, a 25 room independent hotel near £45,000, and a hotel with a heated pool and a full restaurant can be well past £100,000. Those use 25p per kWh for electricity, 7p per kWh for gas and standing charges, and they are estimates until a bill says otherwise.
Our park resells electricity to static caravan owners. Does that change the maths?
It makes your unit rate matter more, not less. Under Ofgem's resale rules a park cannot charge holiday home owners more per unit than it pays its own supplier, so every penny on the site rate either comes off your margin or lands on an owner who will notice. Getting the site contract right protects both at once.
We only trade part of the year. Can a seasonal site still switch?
Yes, and it is usually worth more than it is for a year round site. Suppliers that see lumpy consumption and no explanation tend to quote defensively. Say what your trading season is up front and the quote comes back priced on the real profile.
Figures on this page are estimates from published UK benchmarks and the tariff assumptions above, not quotes. See how we estimate.