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The adoption of natural ventilation is prevalent in semi-open hotel lobbies on the tropical island of Hainan, China. This paper presents the results of a thermal comfort study of such applications in ten luxury hotels in this region. Significant differences were found between the local residents and tourists in their thermal satisfaction and between the males and females in their thermal comfort. Moreover, the thermal satisfaction levels of the local residents and tourists showed significant correlations with the wind speed and air temperature considering the wind speed compensation, with regard to genders, the males’ thermal comfort levels showed significant correlations with the wind speed and air temperature considering the wind speed compensation, while the females’ thermal comfort levels showed significant correlations with air temperature, wind speed and the air temperature considering the wind speed compensation. And results of ordinal logistic regression show that the tourists are more sensitive to the wind speed and air temperature considering the wind speed compensation than the local residents, and the females are more sensitive to the air temperature, wind speed and air temperature considering the wind speed compensation than the males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Hainan province is the only tropical and island province in China, with the unique climatic and geographical features. It has a different energy performance in public buildings from those in the inland areas. This paper investigated the current situation of energy consumption of the sampled public buildings, including 26 hotels, 24 office buildings and 7 department stores, through analyzing utility billing data, on-site survey and measurement, and site operational records. The breakdowns of energy consumption found out that the electricity dominated the energy consumption for all the sampled buildings and the air conditioning system played a key role in the energy consumption of major building services. By analyzing the main factors for building energy consumption, the annual average energy use indexes were calculated to be 141.63kWh/m2, 87.70kWh/m2, and 166.95kWh/m2 for hotels, office buildings and department stores, respectively. Besides, the comparison between Hainan province and other areas revealed that the building energy consumption of this tropical province was at a low level. Because indoor environment quality can influence the health and work efficiency of humans in buildings, field tests on the indoor environment quality were also carried out, and the performance of indoor environment quality was rated. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]