Iberostar Hotels & Resorts deploys Sener’s artificial intelligence to reduce its energy footprint and improve customer experience

In line with its objective of achieving carbon neutrality in 2030, that is, 20 years before the industry’s target, Iberostar Hotels & Resorts has taken another step in its ambitious decarbonisation strategy and has joined the Sener engineering and technology group to create BRAIAN, a solution based on artificial intelligence that enables hotels to improve their energy performance by optimising the air-conditioning system, their main energy consumer.

BRAIAN (a play on the words brain and artificial intelligence) is geared towards the company’s commitment to climate action, a key focus area of the Iberostar Wave of Change movement, and it addresses two objectives: achieving energy savings of 35% and a reduction of 85% of scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, while ensuring an excellent experience for its guests.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, BRAIAN manages to predict more precisely the energy performance of hotels and optimise their operation by means of a system that anticipates needs for the purpose of better decision-making. As a result, the tool centralises and analyses energy data from different variables of the chain’s management systems, such as the hotel’s control system or BMS and the hotel’s occupation in a given period or PMS, and other external data, such as the weather forecast, in order to integrate them into a single platform.

For example, this system allows anticipating the flow of guests in a specific area and adjusting its air-conditioning beforehand, thus helping to save energy while ensuring a higher degree of thermal comfort. BRAIAN can also perform as a virtual operator working hand in hand with the hotels’ technical service professionals, simplifying their daily work.

The tool will be implemented in a maximum of five hotels in the chain in 2025, and it is currently available in Iberostar Waves Royal Andalus (Cadiz), Iberostar Waves Alcudia Park and Iberostar Selection Playa de Palma (Mallorca). It will also be operational shortly at Iberostar Selection Cancun (Mexico).

This operator is based on a solution previously developed by Sener, Respira®, which is designed to centralise and analyse energy data. Respira® has already been successfully deployed on infrastructure such as metros or airports, e.g. in the air conditioning systems of Manises airport, in Valencia, or the Barcelona Metro.

Álvaro Sánchez López, Global Director of Sustainability – Integration and Impact at Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, states that “this project represents our commitment to innovation, sustainability and providing our customers with an excellent experience. We have a solid roadmap for the decarbonisation of our operations, and BRAIAN contributes on this path. We highly value the support it offers to our maintenance staff”.

Meanwhile, Guillem Peris, director of the Respira® project at Sener, points out that “Iberostar has set an ambitious goal to reduce its emissions and move towards a more sustainable model, committing to technology and data in its achievement. We are glad that they have trusted in our AI capabilities for this endeavour. BRAIAN is the materialisation of Iberostar’s commitment to new technologies aimed at maximising efficiency in its hotels and, as a result, improving customer experience”.

BRAIAN won the Smart Buildings category of the 12th edition of the enerTIC Awards held in 2024. These awards are organised by enerTIC and recognise innovation and the improvement of energy competitiveness through digitisation.