# Assessment of Energy-Saving Practices of the Hospitality Industry in Macau
## 5 Conclusions  
For sustainable development, there is an increasing concern about the energy efficiency issue. As Macau transforms from a Casino city to Green tourism city and promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is very important to know the status of energy efficiency in the hotels. This work conducts such an investigation by proposing an evaluation index system in reference to the LEED method. To make the investigation meaningful, we selected 28 hotels (eleven 5-star hotels, six 4-star hotels, six 3-star hotels, and five 2-star hotels) that include 42.42% of hotels in Macau.  
With this investigation, it is shown that great efforts have been made for energy efficiency and environmental protection in Macau, such that energy consumption is significantly reduced. It is found that among the 16 indices, the implementation rate of seven indices is greater than 70% and the implementation rate of nine indices is more than 50%. Also, there are six indices whose implementation rate is lower than 40%. For most of the indices, the implementation rate of 5-star hotels is higher than the others. This implies that, generally, the 5-star hotels perform better than others. It is also shown that, among the 16 indices, the implementation rate of 11 indices for the 2-star hotels is lower or equal to 40% with the implementation rate of six indices being zero, which is generally bad. Thus, on the one hand, there is a long way to go for Macau to increase energy efficiency. However, on the other hand, it is shown that there are great potentials to improve energy efficiency if the hotels in Macau can act properly. Thus, the investigation is meaningful for the future improvement of energy efficiency and environmental protection.  
Based on the results, we put forward some policy suggestions as follows:  
Firstly, in order to optimize the environmental management of hospitality industry in Macau, it is urgent to improve the development of Green Hotel legal system and structure based on the existing environmental laws Macau (2010). Also, for energy and environmental protection, it may be meaningful to make the status of energy consumption of the hotels under the public supervision. More specifically, a hotel should present its energy consumption report every year to the public. Some incentive measures and policies may be used to encourage a hotel to do so.  
Secondly, due to that the performance of the 2-star hotels is not good, it is important for them to have the environmental awareness and improve energy efficiency. Supervision and management of 2-star hotels may be imposed for the 2-star hotels such that they can pay significant attention to energy efficiency.  
Thirdly, for the 3, 4 and 5-star hotels, although significant efforts have been made such that energy efficiency has been improved, there are still significant potentials to do better. These hotels should be encouraged to use advanced information technology to improve their energy efficiency further since it has been shown that information technology can greatly reduce energy consumption in buildings.  
Lastly, since renewable energy is significant in energy efficiency and environmental protection, it is vitally important to optimize the power structure by increasing the use of renewable energies such as solar and wind power Macau (2012).  
This work was supported in part by Science and Technology development fund (FDCT) of Macau under Grant 106/2016/A3.  
**Author Contributions:** This investigation is mainly done by Ph. D. student [PERSON] under the supervision of Professor [PERSON], while [PERSON] and [PERSON] help to collect a significant part of data and do data analysis. The paper is drafted by [PERSON] and revised by [PERSON].  
**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.