Get Your Hotel Off Bottled Water: A Guest Experience Upgrade

What Guests Pour

Nearly 350,000 pours across Aquablu's hotel installations tell a consistent story about how guests use the water in front of them.

Chilled still water accounts for 56% of the volume poured, the plain, cold glass a guest reaches for by default more than half the time. Room-temperature still and sparkling split the remainder at roughly 23% and 21%. Sparkling shows up disproportionately more often relative to its volume: guests sip it rather than fill a carafe with it, so the pours are smaller and more frequent.

Flavored water tells its own story. It makes up 70% of total volume across 244,300 pours, nearly two and a half times the frequency of plain water. Guests treat it more like a drink they choose than a refill they need.

Placement matters as much as flavor. Guest floors account for 51% of volume across 125,915 pours, larger fills, fewer trips, consistent with someone topping up a room carafe once or twice a day. Common areas, the gym, the breakfast room, the lobby, the staff pantry, carry 49% of volume but nearly double the pour frequency, smaller, more frequent servings that track with gym and breakfast traffic.

Noticed isn't enough. It has to be measurable.

Guests aren't the only ones checking. Corporate travel buyers write sustainability criteria into RFPs before a property is shortlisted, and the same scrutiny hits conference rooms and events, where cases of bottled water are still the norm. Certifications like LEED, Green Key, and EarthCheck give facilities teams a standard to build toward, and EU reporting is moving toward verified measurement rather than stated intent. So the moves guests notice also have to hold up as numbers you can report: energy per occupied room, water per stay, waste kept out of landfill.

The cost case holds up the same way. A 100-room hotel running at 70% occupancy and 1.5 guests per room works out to roughly 38,000 guest-nights a year. Bottled water runs about €0.65 per guest-night. Aquablu runs about €0.30, roughly half.

The REFILL+ Series 2 water system holds up to that scrutiny because every pour is metered. The carbon case is concrete too: the bottled water you displace can carry close to 1 kg of CO₂ per litre once production, packaging, transport and disposal are counted, while the refill side adds only grams. 

Where smart water stations fit: rooms, floors, and conference halls

A station on each guest floor removes the case for a plastic bottle. Add a premium carafe to each room and guests can pour still, sparkling, flavored, or functional water any time it suits them. That one-station-per-floor setup is also what puts a hotel ahead of the August 2026 rule banning single-use bottles in guest rooms.

The same setup covers banquets and conference spaces too, and it's usually the biggest case and the easiest to justify. A single hall can call for four or more systems to serve hundreds of delegates, and it folds neatly into an all-in delegate rate that already covers room, catering, and drinks. Staff areas are a quieter third win, covered by a single system.

It isn't one size fits all. Conference and banqueting space is usually the biggest case and the easiest to justify, a single hall can call for four or more systems to serve hundreds of delegates, and it folds neatly into an all-in delegate rate. Guest floors run about one station per floor feeding the in-room carafes, and staff areas are a quieter third win. Early movers are already turning it into positioning: the NBC Congress Center adopted ahead of the curve and now points to it as part of why it's recognised among the country's best meeting venues.

Guests register the shift to a more sustainable service, and they get a wider choice of options too. Plus, you can stay on top of reporting and costs, tracking every pour as it lands. Forget flawed stock takes.

See how REFILL+ Series 2 works for your hotel → Explore for hotels

Or read the full Sheraton Brussels Airport story.