Desalination can efficiently provide all the fresh water hotels and their surrounding economies need. Reusing hotel wastewater is also more cost-effective than desalinating seawater.
Reverse osmosis and reuse can provide all the clean water that resorts and tourist areas need
Water scarcity is a growing crisis, particularly in coastal regions. For Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) hotels, reliant on tourism and often situated in arid environments, access to clean water is a critical challenge. As climate change intensifies, traditional water sources are becoming increasingly unreliable.
With World Water Week upon us, the global spotlight turns to water scarcity solutions. Desalination offers a promising solution to this problem, providing a consistent supply of fresh water for hotels to meet the demands of guests and operations.
Hotels frequently use more than 400 GPD (1.5 m3/d) per room for laundry services, showers, toilets, and various other uses. Hotel restaurants can also use an average of 3,000-7,000 GPD (11.35-26.5 m3/d).
Without tapping traditional freshwater sources, reverse osmosis desalination can provide ample clean, safe, and fresh water for a number of purposes, including:
- Drinking
- Guest sinks, toilets, baths, and showers
- Hotel laundry service
- Restaurant food prep, cleaning, and dishwashing
- Filling and replenishing swimming pools
By desalinating water, hotels and resorts can secure their own independent source of clean water, without dipping into the municipal supply.
Taking Advantage of Water Reuse
In addition to desalination, hotels and resorts can take advantage of a second opportunity: water reuse. Hotel wastewater is more cost-effective to treat than seawater, and the resulting effluent is ideal for numerous nonpotable applications.
Additionally, with 85% of wastewater in the Caribbean discharged untreated into the same turquoise seas that the tourist industry relies upon to draw visitors, high-quality wastewater treatment keeps reefs and beaches free of pollution.
Fluence’s Aspiral™ offers a compact, modular solution specifically designed for treating wastewater at hotels and resorts. This efficient system removes contaminants and impurities, producing high-quality effluent suitable for irrigation, toilet flushing, and other nonpotable applications.
For example, the Cabot St. Lucia golf course has NIROBOX™ desalination plants and Aspiral™ wastewater treatment plants on-site for reuse in one of the most beautiful golf courses in the world. A complete water cycle solution, featuring desalination and wastewater reuse, brings efficiency along with independence.
Neighbors and Ecosystems Benefit from Desalination and Reuse
In some regions, tourism demands more than eight times more water per person than local populations. The constant pressure on dwindling natural sources can jeopardize the positive impact hotels have on local economies, putting businesses at odds with communities and degrading ecosystems.
Reverse osmosis desalination and wastewater reuse, however, increase water efficiency to the point that hotels need not depend on the natural water sources that surrounding towns, ecosystems, and agriculture rely upon. Some hotels even desalinate surplus water to share with surrounding communities.
Fluence Desalination at Hotels and Resorts
For energy efficiency, compact design, rapid deployment, and scalability, nothing matches Fluence’s NIROBOX™ containerized plants.
For instance, at Resorts World on the Caribbean island of North Bimini, NIROBOX™ produces excess fresh water to share with the local water authority.
Explore Desalination for Your LAC Hotel or Resort
Today’s eco-savvy traveler is more sustainability-conscious than ever, and a complete water cycle solution featuring NIROBOX™ reverse osmosis desalination and Aspiral™ wastewater treatment helps meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria.
To address operations and maintenance costs for advanced membrane systems, Fluence Water Management Services offers flexible financing options that keep maintenance, membrane replacement, and operating costs down, and eliminate upfront costs.
Don’t let water scarcity threaten your business. Embrace sustainability with a complete water cycle solution from Fluence. Our NIROBOX™ containerized plants offer energy-efficient desalination — perfect for hotels of all sizes in the LAC region — while Aspiral™ wastewater treatment enables safe water reuse.
Contact our water experts to explore a customized solution for your hotel and secure your water future.
