“Will that be nonetheless or glowing?” as a query requested by servers is about to get much more difficult, and it has profound implications for not simply onsite eating places however for all situations in your rooms the place visitors instantly work together with water – specifically, bottles, sink and bathe.
For many who simply need the TLDR, right here’s our thesis:
- As wellness turns into a central side of society, there’s rising consciousness for the hidden risks lurking inside our water provides and their long-term well being results.
- This concern can justify extra onsite filtration capex or upscale bottling as branded options to drive nightly charges or supplemental revenues within the room and on the restaurant.
- Concurrently, as ESG takes maintain, motels must improve their water administration methods and remove single-use plastics, presenting but two extra marketable model options.
- The underside line is that water is now not simply water however is rife with innovation, traits and applied sciences to assist in ramping up each sustainability practices in addition to human longevity.
The Downside
The rationale for wanting ever-cleaner water comes right down to what biologists and physicians name hormone or endocrine disruptors. Now in 2023, we now have accomplished sufficient longitudinal inhabitants research to attract statistical causality between the long-term publicity from such substances like heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, bisphenols in canned items, phthalates in cosmetics, solvents in sunscreens and even prescribed drugs leftover in our water provides that every one have detrimental well being results like temper problems, persistent irritation, weight problems and low testosterone ranges.
That is what human longevity pundits would codify as a ‘dying by a thousand cuts’ drawback. The acute publicity to one thing hazardous like glyphosate or atrazine (each are herbicides sprayed on non-organic crops that leech into our meals and animal feed) received’t register a noticeable impact, any but persistent, decades-long ingestion will speed up different damaging well being situations by jumbling the right ratio of our bodily chemical substances and preoccupying the immune system.
Excising these chemical substances from our lives is a big, existential problem made even worse by the truth that the unnatural stuff we people produce additionally impacts different species, doubtlessly resulting in bioaccumulation up the meals chain, mutations or environmental degradation. As an illustration, some compounds in non-mineral sunscreens (usually along with being hormone disruptors) have been proven to bleach coral reefs, serving to propel the motion for ‘reef protected’ merchandise.
As governments and companies change into extra draconian with their environmental insurance policies, cleansing up the water will undoubtedly acquire extra consideration, necessitating upgrades at municipal amenities, at particular person buildings and for commercially bought merchandise. For the on a regular basis client, the mix of this ever-growing deal with ESG with every new scientific evaluation that reaches the airwaves on a specific well being hazard will drive increasingly folks to rethink ingesting common faucet water.
This shall be mirrored at dwelling with the buying of superior filtration models like a kitchen reverse osmosis system, a tough water filter for the showerhead or one thing extra cellular like a filtered water pitcher. And as one does in personal, one will count on the identical (or higher) for public areas, which means that there might quickly be a time when your visitors will grimace on the server’s mere point out of unfiltered faucet water, the presence of solely mushy, single-use plastic bottled water within the room (which regularly comprise leeched phthalates) or the dearth of any extra bathe water filtration.
The Alternative
Hardly a glass-half-empty scenario the place your lodge will inevitably have to soak up the mandated capex, that is the proper utility of the blue ocean strategic considering (each puns supposed).
That’s, deploying superior water filtration methods throughout the guestrooms can change into a visual and marketable room characteristic in an effort to lure within the rising wellness-minded crowd or probably command a better nightly charge. Then within the restaurant, with the suitable clarification visitors shall be greater than keen to pay an inexpensive payment for having bottles of filtered nonetheless or glowing, or by procured a trusted provider on this house. On the very least, it’s going to improve the meal expertise.
For in-room upgrades, the 2 of us have lengthy ragged on motels that overcharge for bottled water. One factor we’re fully certain of: single-use plastic bottles are a dinosaur and so they merely should go, each for the hormone disruption purpose in addition to to appease climatarians.
Now let’s say you as an alternative supply a high-end bottled water provider that makes use of both laborious plastic or aluminum in a graphically pleasing method; this might help to justify the worth tag of what we’d think about overcharging the visitor. Furthermore, a mineral water choice might be a part of the brand new minibar inventory as you rethink this oft-staid amenity.
And whereas fascinated with water bottles, you may also think about these as a branded memento – a pleasant gesture for visitor satisfaction but in addition one that can assist with ‘social proofing’ because of its utility outdoors of the family. Widespread on cruise ships these days is to supply every cabin with a metallic refillable water bottle then have pure water pump stations all around the boat (caveat: this might not be as sensible for motels that take care of a way more transient visitor).
Such initiatives are clearly not for each lodge group, however we’re witnessing a continuing climb in wellness-driven visitors for which these types of health-boosting facilities are significant, each of their model choice and for producing ancillary spend.
So, maybe you check the waters (apologies, these water puns simply circulation) by carving out a brand new ‘wellness room’ class after renovating a single flooring, putting in vitamin C bathe filters and a reverse osmosis faucet with an aluminum bottle subsequent to it for refilling, alongside different upgrades like sensible lighting, HEPA air filters and train tools.
Then taking the lengthy view on ESG, we all know that environmentalism will change into each more and more vital for visitors (particularly from the youthful generations) whereas governments will concurrently be ramping up bylaws. Collectively, this implies there’s a clear and current case for conducting a research on the fee and breakeven level of putting in new water saving or water recycling methods. Very similar to how one can market purified water to visitors, we’d argue that proper now sustainability may also be leveraged as a advertising and marketing software to garner the advocacy of those buyer mindsets and to drive charge.
The Future
To finish, let’s provide you with one totally-out-there risk to indicate the place the marketplace for high-end water could also be headed. Bear with us whereas we riff by means of some chemistry, whereas the general level is that this omnipresent fluid gives many layers of applied sciences which you can capitalize upon.
Hardly mainstream science simply but, however there may be rising proof that ‘deuterium-depleted water’ (DDW) might help to enhance the piezoelectric structuring of gel-state water inside our cells and mitochondria to optimize protein folding and increase power ranges. For reference, deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen that mixes with oxygen to type ‘heavy water’ denoted as D20 versus common water which is H20, the place these atomic-level disturbances to the fluid’s construction are brought on by heavy water’s sharper bond angle over gentle water (120 levels for the D-O bond versus 135 levels for H-O bonds).
In most water provides – save for glacial runoff and recent mountain spring water – heavy water naturally exists solely round 150 elements per million. Nonetheless, that is one other death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation.
Thus, utilizing particular equipment (that are in the marketplace at the moment) to take away D2O and create purified DDW or ‘gentle water’ can theoretically work over a protracted time period it could enhance well being. Fascinatingly, the impetus for investigating DDW as a salve got here from the showering waters beneath the Sanctuary of Our Woman of Lourdes in France, which have lengthy been sought out for his or her ’miraculous’ therapeutic skills.
All that is to say that water is not only water anymore. There are improvements occurring and new methods to make use of the most recent water traits to construct revenues to your lodge. Possibly in a decade a server at a high-quality eating institution can get away with asking the desk, With that be nonetheless, glowing or deuterium-depleted water?
Thoughts you, the latter entry on this sci-fi case can be priced far increased than the previous two.
For now, although, know that there are steps you’ll be able to take to make use of one thing so commonplace and very important to our lives as water to reinforce the visitor expertise. Wellness-minded prospects need it and the ESG mandates are quickly to comply with, so get began at the moment.
