Hotels often comprise of many functional areas, which makes it necessary to define a clear boundary of what is included in the benchmark. Bordass (2005) pointed out that energy efficiency of tenanted areas is often beyond the hotel management’s control, and hence they should be benchmarked separately. However, decoupling energy use of the tenants (usually tenanted restaurants and retail shops) was found to be difficult in the surveyed hotels. Although some tenants have separate utility meters and pay bills directly to the utility companies, most of them use central air-conditioning provided by hotels, and this part of energy use is often not metered or archived. Therefore, it was decided to include energy consumption of tenanted areas in the benchmark.