Why do guests waste AC they would never waste at home?

The waste costs you €190–450 per AC unit per season, and the person creating it is not a bad guest. They are an ordinary person responding to an extraordinary price: €0.00 per kilowatt-hour. At home they close windows, nudge the thermostat and grumble at the bill, because the bill is theirs. In your property the bill is yours, and economics has a name for what happens next.

The short answer

Guests waste AC in rentals and hotels because they face no marginal cost for it. The nightly rate is fixed; the electricity is invisible and free at the point of use. Peer-reviewed research on what economists call the energy efficiency gap, published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists in 2018, documents the mechanism: when landlords pay for utilities, tenants face no marginal cost for energy use and consume more. It is a textbook moral hazard problem, and a guest on a fixed-price stay is the sharpest version of it, because the relationship lasts a week instead of a lease term and no reputation carries over to the next booking.

The important word is systematic. This is not a story about a few inconsiderate people dragging up the average. The same research finds that all-inclusive contracts, where energy is bundled into a flat price, produce higher consumption than metered contracts across the board. Change the price from something to nothing and behaviour moves, for nearly everyone, in the same direction.

The same person, two price tags

Think about what actually differs between a guest's home and your property. Not the person. Not their tolerance for cold. Not their values. The only thing that changes at check-in is who pays for the electricity, and that single change is enough to flip the behaviour.

Economists call the pattern moral hazard: insulate someone from the cost of their choices and the choices change. The research on rental housing adds a twist worth knowing. People who pay their own utilities tend to sort themselves into more efficient homes, and people who do not, do not bother. Selection and incentive push the same way. A short-term guest is the limiting case: they did not choose your property for its energy profile, they will never see a bill, and they leave before any habit could form.

Why education keeps losing

Once you see the incentive structure, the standard remedies explain their own failure. The welcome-book note, the laminated sign by the remote, the polite message about keeping the AC at 24°C: each one asks the guest to volunteer a cost, in comfort or attention, for a saving that accrues entirely to you. The economics says that request loses, and it does not lose because guests read the note and refuse. It loses because there is nothing in the room to make the request stick: no price, no feedback, no consequence. Based on our operating experience across seasons in Ibiza, the note survives first contact with the remote by about a day.

Deposits and penalty clauses fail differently: they convert an invisible cost into a visible confrontation. So does per-kWh billing, which does fix the incentive, at the price of surprise charges, disputes at checkout and reviews that mention being nickel-and-dimed on holiday. You can make the guest pay, or you can make the guest care, but both put the cost-cutting where the guest can feel it, and the guest is the person writing your review.

Fix the constraint, not the person

There is a third option: stop needing the guest to care. If the room cannot be set below the comfort band and the unit cannot run unattended all day, the incentive gap stops mattering. The guest keeps doing what a rational person at a price of zero does, and the waste no longer follows, because the extreme settings and the forgotten hours are simply not available any more.

That is what Narveo does, and its origin is this exact problem. It was built by a vacation rental operator in Ibiza, after years of watching guests leave the AC running at 16°C all day, and it still runs in the founder's own properties. Narveo replaces the AC remote, caps the minimum temperature, ships preset to a recommended 22–25°C limit inside the recognised comfort band, and auto-shuts off after a set time. The guest keeps the remote and full comfort control within efficient limits, so nothing reads as restriction and nothing needs explaining at check-in. It sets up in under 2 minutes, costs €69 per unit and works with 6,000+ AC codes. No app. No WiFi. No installation.

FAQ

When Narveo is not the right solution

Narveo is designed for rentals and hotels where guests control split AC units and the operator pays the electricity. If your guests already pay metered utilities, the incentive gap this article describes does not apply to you. Properties in cool climates with minimal AC use will see proportionally less return, and Narveo is not compatible with ducted or centralised BMS systems. Owner-occupied properties, where the person at the remote is the person paying the bill, already have the incentive alignment built in.