resicentral® blog

Home for Christmas: a warm welcome that runs itself

Suzanne Luscombe — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 14:40:52 GMT

The first ten seconds after a guest opens the door decide a lot. Over Christmas, those seconds count double. People arrive tired, cold and carrying too much luggage. A warm, lit space says we were expecting you. A cold, dark one says the opposite, and it shows up in reviews long after the decorations come down.

The question is how you deliver that welcome at your busiest time of year, without your team spending Christmas Eve driving round to switch the heating on.

The two ways it usually goes wrong

Option one: the manual round. Someone visits each unit before arrival to turn the heating up and the lights on. It works, but it's slow, it's expensive, and it falls apart the moment a flight is delayed or a booking lands at the last minute. Over the holidays, when your team is stretched thinnest, it's the first thing to slip.

Option two: leave it on just in case. Heating runs for days in empty units so they're warm whenever the guest turns up. Comfortable for the guest, painful for the energy bill, especially with prices forecast to rise again in January.

There's a better way: let the booking do the work.

How booking-led automation works

resicentral® pulls iCal booking data from most property management systems. Every unit then follows its own bookings, not a fixed schedule:

The booking lands. Arrival and departure dates and times sync automatically from your PMS.
Pre-heat before arrival. Heating comes up from its setback ahead of check-in, so the unit is at 18°C or above when the door opens.
Lights on at check-in. resiNODES fit inside existing light switches, so hallways and living spaces can be lit for the moment the guest walks in.
Comfort during the stay. Occupancy-led rules keep things warm while guests are in and ease back when they're out.
Setback at check-out. The unit returns to its frost setback until the next booking, protected and ready.

If a booking changes, the automation changes with it. Late arrivals, extended stays and last-minute reservations all flow through without anyone touching a thermostat.

And because voids sit on a frost setback rather than going stone cold, units warm up much faster, which matters for same-day turnarounds over the festive peak.

Beyond the welcome

The festive season brings its own challenges. A few more ways the platform helps over the holidays:

Noise alerts. Sustained high noise levels trigger an alert, so a party can be dealt with before it becomes a neighbour complaint. Noise is converted into decibel readings, with no audio recorded.
Leak detection and water shut-off. Unusually high water flow is caught early, in occupied units and voids, even when the office is closed.
Remote overrides. If a guest wants it warmer, your team can adjust it from the portal, wherever they are.

Your pre-Christmas checklist

Confirm your PMS iCal feeds are connected for every unit
Check pre-heat timings for your coldest buildings
Set every void to a frost setback
Turn on noise and leak alerts for the holiday period
Agree who on your team receives alerts over Christmas and New Year

How resicentral helps

resicentral® makes every arrival warm, every void protected, and every unit match its booking, with nobody on the road. That's a better first impression for your guests, a quieter Christmas for your team and a lower energy bill for you.

Want it running before the festive rush? Book a demo and we'll show you booking-led automation on your own buildings.

Energy prices are forecast to rise 16% in January. Here's what you can control.

Suzanne Luscombe — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 14:26:46 GMT

The Energy went up again on 1 October, and the next rise is already forming. Ofgem's price cap rose 4%, taking a typical household bill to £1,723 a year. On 30 September, Cornwall Insight forecast a further 16% rise from January, to around £1,999. That would be the largest increase since January 2023.

Cornwall Insight says the wholesale price rises seen in September are already locked into the January calculation, making an increase all but certain. Ofgem will confirm the final figure in late November.

So what does this mean for operators, and what can you actually do about it?

"We're not on the price cap." You're still affected.

The price cap covers household tariffs. Most operators buy energy on commercial contracts, which aren't capped at all. But commercial prices are set by the same wholesale market that's pushing the cap up. Different contract, same direction of travel.

If some of your units sit on domestic supplies, as many leased-back apartments do, the cap applies to those directly.

If your fixed rate ends this winter

A fixed contract protects you until the day it ends. If yours rolls over between now and spring, you'll be renewing into one of the most expensive points of the year.

Find your end date now. Not in January.
Talk to your broker or supplier early. Commercial contracts can often be agreed ahead of the end date.
Know your consumption before you negotiate. Accurate, unit-level usage data gives you a stronger position than a year of estimated bills.

The three parts of every energy bill

Whatever contract you're on, your bill is built from three things:

Part of the bill	What it is	Who controls it
Standing charge	A fixed daily fee for being connected	Your supplier. You pay it whether you use energy or not
Unit rate	The price of each kWh	The market and your contract. Negotiable, but only at renewal
Consumption	How many kWh you actually use	You, every hour of every day

Unit rates and standing charges are worth negotiating. But you only get that chance once a contract. Consumption is the part you can change today, and it multiplies everything else.

The maths that matters

If unit prices rise 16% and you use 36% less energy, the usage part of your bill ends up around 26% lower than it was before the rise. You've more than absorbed the increase.

The arithmetic is simple: 1.16 × 0.64 = 0.74. Price up, usage down further, bill down.

Why operators on all-inclusive rates feel it most

When guests don't pay for the energy they use, they have no reason to think about it. Heating gets turned up and left on. Windows get opened with the radiators running. Lights stay on in empty rooms. This isn't new. It's the same challenge all-inclusive operators have always had, but every price rise makes it more expensive.

You can't ask guests to manage your energy bill. You can make sure the building does.

Let automation manage the usage for you

resicentral® connects to the heating, cooling and lighting already in your buildings and adjusts them automatically, unit by unit:

Occupancy-led control eases heating back when a unit is empty and brings it back before guests return.
Booking-led control uses your PMS data, so voids aren't heated like occupied units.
Sensible limits keep comfort high and stop heating running flat out.
Live visibility shows which buildings and units are running hot, so you can act before the bill arrives.

Our clients see an average energy saving of 36%, depending on building size and build. When consumption goes down, so does your bill, whatever happens to the price.

January's rise is coming either way. Book a 15-minute energy review and see what your buildings could save before it lands.

Figures correct at 1 October 2026. The January price cap is a forecast until Ofgem confirms it in late November.

The magic number is 18: a winter playbook for fewer site visits

Suzanne Luscombe — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 14:17:16 GMT

Every winter follows the same pattern. The temperature drops, the calls start, and your maintenance team spends December driving between buildings to check radiators, reset thermostats and investigate units that "feel cold". Most of those visits don't need to happen. With the right rules in place and live data from every unit, you can keep occupied spaces comfortable, keep empty ones protected, and solve most problems before anyone picks up their keys.

It starts with one number.

Why 18°C is the floor

The World Health Organization's Housing and Health Guidelines set 18°C as a safe, well-balanced indoor temperature to protect health in cold seasons. It's the widely accepted minimum, and it's the right floor for any occupied unit, room or communal space this winter. The WHO also notes that vulnerable people, including older guests, young children and anyone with a respiratory condition, may need it warmer.

For operators on an all-inclusive rate, 18°C is also a sensible guardrail on the other side. A floor of 18°C protects comfort. A sensible ceiling, combined with occupancy-led setbacks when guests are out, protects your energy bill from heating left on full and up high, whilst no ones there.

Voids: frost setback, never off

It's tempting to switch the heating off in an empty unit. It looks like the cheapest option. In practice it's often the most expensive one.

A unit left to go stone cold over a winter void is exposed to three risks:

Frozen and burst pipes. One escape of water in a void can mean weeks of downtime, an insurance claim and a unit you can't sell.
Damp and mould. Cold surfaces attract condensation. Mould that takes hold in a void becomes the next guest's complaint, or a redecoration bill.
A slow, expensive recovery. Heating a unit back up from cold means warming the air and the building fabric with it: walls, floors and furniture. That takes time and a big burst of energy, and the room still feels cold for hours after the thermostat says it's fine.

A frost-protection setback avoids all three. The unit sits at a low background temperature of around 9°C while it's empty, so the fabric stays dry and protected. When a booking comes in, it reaches 18°C much faster because it isn't starting from zero. That matters for last-minute arrivals and same-day turnarounds.

Triage first, travel second

The biggest winter saving often aren’t just on the energy bill. It's in your team's time.

When a guest reports a cold room, the traditional response is a site visit. With live data, the first step is a two-minute check from the platform:

Look at the unit's live temperature and recent history. Is it actually cold, or did it just drop briefly while a window was open?
Check whether the heating has been called for. If the rules are working and the room is warming up, the answer is a reassuring message, not a van.
Adjust remotely. Raise the setpoint, override a setback, or switch an item like a heated towel rail on or off from the portal.
Send someone only when the data says so. If heating is being called for and the temperature isn't moving, that's a genuine fault, and your engineer arrives knowing what to look for.

Every visit you avoid is time back for the jobs that need hands on site, and one less journey in winter weather.

Five rules to switch on this winter

18°C floor when occupied. Comfort and wellbeing protected, every stay.
A sensible ceiling. Stops heating running flat out when guests don't pay the bill directly.
Occupancy-led setbacks. Units ease back when guests are out.
Frost setback in every void. Protected, dry and quick to bring back.
Mould alerts. Damp and mould season starts now. An early alert is a ventilation conversation; a late one is a redecoration bill.

How resicentral helps

resicentral® runs these rules automatically, unit by unit, across your whole estate. resiAIR™ reads temperature, humidity, occupancy and air quality in real time, and every rule is fully customisable and seasonal, so your winter settings switch on when you need them.

The results show up quickly. In a controlled pilot with Lovat Parks, five equipped units were compared against five identical units without the technology. Gas consumption fell 25% over the first 13 weeks, and 33% as temperatures dropped, with electricity down 15%.

Existing client - Want your winter rules set up before December? Book a 15-minute review and we'll walk through your buildings with you.