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Water consumption benchmarks should be calculated per guest night, it is often easier to do this using litres per guest night as they are easier to understand than cubic metres for most people, particularly when trying to engage other members of staff as it is quite easy to envisage 100 litres of water by imagining 50 bottles of 5 litres. In comparison, saying 0.1 cubic metres is harder for most to visualise.
1. Be Clear on What You’re Measuring
Include all water sources (mains supply, boreholes, rainwater harvesting, tanker deliveries) and clarify whether you're measuring the whole property or just guest-facing operations. Consistency is key for meaningful comparisons.
2. Stick to Litres per Guest Night as Your Core Metric
Top Tip: Water consumption benchmarks are best calculated per guest night, and using litres rather than cubic metres tends to be more effective especially when engaging staff. Litres are easier to visualise; for example, 100 litres can be imagined as 10 bottles of 5 litres each, while 0.1 cubic metres doesn’t mean much to most people. Using a familiar unit helps make the data more relatable and actionable.
This is the most widely used and reliable formula:
Total water used (L) ÷ Total guest nights = Litres per guest night
(Guest nights = number of guests x number of nights)
3. Record aware of the different variables to keep your comparisons fair and helpful. Water use can vary dramatically based on:
Hotel type (e.g. budget vs. luxury)
On-site facilities (e.g. pools, spas, laundry)
Climate (e.g. dry versus tropical)
Seasonality
In-house versus outsourced laundry
4. Track Trends Over Time
Top Tip: As with other things in life, the most valuable benchmark is your own past performance and not your performance versus others. Use monthly or quarterly data to spot seasonal shifts, to highlight the impacts of any equipment or procedural changes, or to detect anomalies like leaks.
5. Compare like with like for performance benchmarking
For hotel chains with multiple properties, it helps to identify unusually high or low water use, and to set realistic targets if you compare similar properties, for example:
Urban hotels with other urban hotels
Resort hotel with other resort hotels
Properties that serve similar guest profiles or have similar occupancy patterns
Comparing different hotel types (e.g. urban hotels versus resorts) can still be useful for strategic insights, but not for benchmarking performance.
For example, it would help you to:
Understand differences in water use intensity across business models
Set broader group-wide policies such as deciding where to prioritise upgrades and investments
Explain costs or resource allocation to senior management
Justify different sustainability goals across different property types
6. Refer to Industry Benchmarks but Use Them Carefully
Global averages vary widely, and whilst they are useful, it is important to use them for context but not as an absolute target. As previously mentioned, the best indication of progress is the changes in your own consumption patterns.
Efficient: 150–300 L/guest night
Average: 300–600 L/guest night
High consumption: 700+ L/guest night
Sources: UNWTO, Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, Green Key, LEED
7. Consider Staff Impact on Water Use
If your property has high staff numbers (e.g. all-inclusive resorts), or staff accommodation on site, then water use per guest night might be misleading. For your own internal use, it might be worth tracking litres per guest + staff night for more accuracy.
8. Go Beyond the Total and Break it Down
For really useful insight, create mini benchmarks for water-intensive areas such as :
Laundry (litres per kg washed)
Kitchens (litres per cover)
Irrigation (litres per m² of landscaped area)
These types of targeted KPIs require the hotel to have, or to install sub-meters however, this is an excellent way to help to pinpoint inefficiencies and to focus improvements and investments where they’ll have the most impact.
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