A hotel group with three beachfront properties in Quintana Roo wanted a corporate energy function and did not want a corporate energy hire. It bought the function as a fixed monthly subscription. On the engagement record Mexico Energy Partners keeps for this client, electricity cost per occupied room across the three properties fell about 9% over two years.

That number is a ratio, not a cut in the electricity bill. Occupancy rose over the same period, and occupancy is the denominator. The methodology note below sets out what was measured and what is still missing.

The decision this case helps a hotel CFO test is narrow. Whether an outsourced energy office does the work a salaried one would, at the portfolio size you actually run.

What the group bought

The three properties each have several hundred rooms, restaurants, pools and large common areas. Air conditioning, chilled water production and lighting carry most of the electricity load. Property engineering teams were absorbed in keeping plant running and answering guest issues. Nobody was looking across the portfolio.

Mexico Energy Partners delivered the Virtual Energy Manager subscription with five deliverables:

• Centralized review of every CFE bill for the three properties, consolidated into one energy dashboard.
• Two standard performance measures, kWh per occupied room and kWh per square meter of conditioned space, tracked the same way at all three sites.
• Business cases for chiller optimization, lighting retrofits and possible solar, each with payback and IRR.
• RFP support and technical evaluation of vendor proposals.
• Annual Scope 2 emissions estimates and the supporting narrative for ESG reporting.

Over the first eighteen months the program standardized the two measures across the three hotels. It reviewed chilled water production data and resequenced chillers and pumps. It designed a phased LED retrofit for public areas, back of house corridors and exterior lighting. It screened one property for rooftop solar and produced an annual emissions summary. The standard scope of the Virtual Energy Manager subscription is broader than what this client bought, and the gap is worth reading against your own site list.

What the subscription did not cover

Mexico Energy Partners worked remotely on this engagement. Execution stayed with each property's engineering team and its contractors. Backup power and outage exposure were outside the scope. So was anything requiring a person on site.

Mexico Energy Partners has not published the fee for this engagement, so the buy against hire comparison cannot be run from this article alone. That comparison is the reason to read the case, and the fee for a specific portfolio is what to ask for.

How the 9% was measured

This figure is Mexico Energy Partners engagement data. It is not a published study and it has not been audited by a third party.

What was measured: billed electricity cost from CFE invoices for all three properties, divided by occupied room nights reported by the group. What was compared: the reporting year against the baseline year before the engagement began. What was not held constant: tariff movement and occupancy, both of which moved over the period.

The engagement timeline also needs a note. The initiative list above covers the first eighteen months. The result is stated at the two year mark, so the final six months carry the full effect of work started earlier. No separate reading was taken at eighteen months.

Three variables remain outside the published account. The baseline and reporting periods by date. The occupied room night series used as the denominator. Total billed electricity spend in each period. The last one matters most. Without it, a 9% fall in cost per occupied room is arithmetically consistent with a bill that rose, because a rising denominator pulls the ratio down on its own. Treat the number as evidence that the portfolio got more efficient per unit of business, not as cash returned to the group.

Why cooling and lighting were the right first targets

CONUEE, in its 2009 guide to energy efficiency in the hotel industry, published a measured breakdown for one Mexican hotel showing air conditioning at 60% of electricity use and lighting at 20%. The same guide notes that lighting can reach 30 to 40% of the total in medium sized hotels. The spread between those figures is the reason the program started by measuring rather than by specifying equipment.

Occupancy in this market runs high and swings by season. Sectur's DATATUR hotel monitoring report for February 2025 put Cancún at 82.8% occupancy for the month and 78.4% for January and February combined, with Playa del Carmen at 83.1% in February. A portfolio measure that ignores occupancy will move with the calendar rather than with plant performance, which is why kWh per occupied room was chosen over kWh per property.

Tariff structure pushes in the same direction. CRE, in Acuerdo A/158/2024 published in the DOF on 24 January 2025, sets the final basic supply tariffs, including GDMTH for users at or above 100 kW per month in medium voltage. GDMTH bills capacity and distribution on measured demand in kW, on top of energy charges that differ across base, intermediate and peak hours. A resort that trims kWh without touching its coincident peak keeps paying the same demand charge, a point covered in more detail in our guide to GDMTH demand charges. Chiller and pump sequencing changes the shape of the load, not only its volume.

The reliability question this engagement did not answer

On 26 September 2025 the Yucatán peninsula lost power for roughly four hours. La Jornada reported on 27 September 2025 that 2,262,000 users in Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo were affected, after maintenance work on 400 kV transmission lines took nine southeastern plants and sixteen units offline. Hotels, airports, hospitals and banks stopped.

Nothing in this engagement addressed that exposure. An energy office reduces cost per room. It does not keep the chillers running when the peninsula grid drops. A CFO buying the subscription should decide separately whether backup capacity and outage cost sit inside the scope or outside it. For the wider picture of where hotel energy cost and risk sit in Mexico, see our guide to hotel energy savings.

The solar screening was an input, not a result

One property was screened for rooftop potential and basic economics under different ownership and PPA structures. A screening is a study. This case does not report a built system, and it should not be read as one.

The structure question has a hard regulatory edge in Mexico. The Ley del Sector Eléctrico, published in the DOF on 18 March 2025, raised the capacity below which distributed generation needs no generation permit from 0.5 MW to 0.7 MW. For a resort roof, that threshold decides whether the project connects as distributed generation or becomes a permitted plant with a different cost and timeline. Screen the roof against the threshold before screening it against a vendor quote.

Scope 2 depends on the factor, and the factor moves

The annual emissions summary is only as firm as the emission factor behind it. SEMARNAT published the Factor de Emisión del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional for 2024 at 0.444 tCO2e per MWh in an aviso dated 28 February 2025. The 2023 factor was 0.438 tCO2e per MWh. Identical consumption reported against those two factors gives different Scope 2 numbers.

Any ESG narrative sent to a tour operator or an investor should name the factor, its year and its source. A number without that basis will not survive a diligence question.

What this case does not prove

This is one anonymized group, three properties, one climate zone, two years. It shows a mechanism working once. It does not establish a sector result, and a portfolio in Monterrey or Guadalajara with a different cooling season would not start from the same load profile.

The reported gains in decision speed and in alignment between finance and engineering are the group's own assessment. No decision cycle time was measured before or after. Read them as client feedback, not as a result.

Compare the subscription against the hire

Request a portfolio energy review. Send twelve months of CFE bills for each property, the tariff class shown on each service, and monthly occupied room nights for the same period.

Mexico Energy Partners will return cost and kWh per occupied room for every property on a common basis, the gap between your best and worst performer, and a fixed monthly fee to close it. Nothing in the review is a promise of savings or of eligibility for any tariff or program. If the arithmetic favors a salaried energy manager at your portfolio size, the review will say so.

Sources

• CONUEE, Guía para el uso eficiente de la energía en la industria hotelera, version 2.1, October 2009. Hotel end use breakdown for air conditioning and lighting.
• Sectur DATATUR, Reporte de monitoreo hotelero, 70 centros turísticos, febrero 2025. Occupancy for Cancún and Playa del Carmen.
• Comisión Reguladora de Energía, Acuerdo A/158/2024, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 24 January 2025. GDMTH definition and charge structure.
• La Jornada, report on the Yucatán peninsula blackout, 27 September 2025. Users affected, states, duration and cause.
• Ley del Sector Eléctrico, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on 18 March 2025. Distributed generation permit exemption raised to 0.7 MW.
• SEMARNAT, aviso on the Factor de Emisión del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional 2024, 28 February 2025, at 0.444 tCO2e per MWh. Prior year factor 0.438 tCO2e per MWh.

Service: Virtual Energy Manager, VEM. Sector: Hotels and resorts. Note: The client is not named, in accordance with our non-disclosure agreement. Figures attributed to Mexico Energy Partners are engagement data held by the firm and are not independently audited.