Digital Twin for Sustainable Hospitality Facilities Management: A Review and Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Digital Twin (DT) holds considerable potential to transform hospitality facilities management (FM) to advance sustainability. Amidst the urgent global call for net zero by 2050 and surging customer demands for green hotels, hoteliers are struggling to elevate travelling experiences for guests while cutting their carbon footprints. Unfortunately, hotel FM is often reactive, posing significant challenges for hoteliers to meet sustainability goals. Previous studies have investigated various energy modelling and BIM-based facilities management; yet, the information exchange between the physical hotel environment and virtual data management remains predominantly static. This study aims to investigate the role of DT in assisting hotel FM to address sustainability challenges. The paper first reviews existing hospitality FM approaches for sustainability, DT definitions and DT applications from the literature. Afterwards, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 industry professionals. The study is novel for designing a DT application framework in hotels. It also contributes by extracting 3 key themes: (1) Business Strategy; (2) Planning and Development and (3) Sustainability and 2 key challenges: (1) Technical Challenges and (2) Organisational Challenges from empirical evidence obtained in interviews. The paper’s findings are significant in guiding the design and deployment of DT systems in hotels in managing their facilities and achieving sustainability goals in the future.