You can order a bottle of Evian or San Pellegrino at the three-Michelin-starred restaurant Zen in Singapore.
But you won't get one.
The restaurant, which charges nearly $500 per person for dinner, only serves water from Swedish company Nordaq, said executive chef Martin Offner.
He said the restaurant's dishes and drinks are made with water as well, from its stock to the juices in non-alcoholic drinks.
Zen is one of more than 140 Michelin-starred restaurants serving Nordic water, said Johanna Mattsson, the company's CEO. CNBC Travel. The water, which is purified and bottled on-site using local tap water, is also found in more than 700 luxury hotels, casinos and cruise ships, she added.
The company aims to reduce single-use water bottles in the hospitality industry – whether of the cheap plastic variety commonly found in hotel rooms, or glass-bottled European mineral water served in upscale restaurants. The latter can travel thousands of miles between its source to where it is finally consumed.
“Moving water over water doesn't make sense,” Mattson said. “This is what we want to eliminate.”
She added that Nordak bottles are free of plastic labels so they can be washed and reused easily, and they also come with a wide mouth so they can be cleaned in regular dishwashers.
The bottles are securely capped and date stamped after they are refilled, Mattson said.
Mandarin Oriental Singapore has had its own Nordaq water system since 2023, with bottles in the hotel rooms, restaurants, spa and gym.
Hotel manager Cindy Kong allowed CNBC Travel to tour their bottling facility to see how bottles are washed, inspected, filled and sealed. She said the facility can produce 500 bottles of pure water in one hour.
“Normally, we process between 1,000 and 2,000 (bottles) per day,” she said.
Nordaq is one of many premium sustainable water companies. Castalie water is in more than 700 hotels in France, according to its website, while Purezza water is served in more than 5,000 places in 13 countries, according to the company's LinkedIn page.
Indian hospitality company ITC Hotels has created its own 'zero mile' water brand called SunyaAqua to reduce single-use plastic bottles at its 140 hotels. “Every guilt-free sip is bottled at home, eliminating the need for transportation,” New Delhi-based ITC Maurya posted on Facebook in July.
Hospitality companies represent the core market for Swiss sustainable water brand Be WTR. It operates within hotels – with a facility opening soon at Rosewood Abu Dhabi – and through central facilities.
Finally, Mike Hecker, founder and CEO of Be WTR, said the water may travel a little further than the “zero mile” water at the ITC Hotel, but not by much.
“We don't want to transport more than 10 kilometers around our packing facility, because, as you well know, the carbon footprint… is heavily impacted by transportation,” he told CNBC. “We try to be there at the point of consumption as much as we can.”
Hecker said the company's main operations are in the UAE, but the water is sold in 12 countries, including recent expansions in Canada and China. The company closed a $44 million Series C funding round in October.
Be WTR can be found in hotels as diverse as Le Bristol Paris, which opened in 1925, and The Standard Singapore (here), which opened almost 100 years later in December 2024.
Source: The Standard, Singapore
Be WTR has signed a global agreement with Accor to be the partner of choice for the French hospitality company's luxury hotel brands.
“We are the first company to have a global water agreement targeting five-star (Accor) brands, such as Raffles, Pullman (and) Sofitel,” he said.
Less waste, more profit
Companies that supply filtered or low-transport water to the tourism and food industries say they save millions of plastic bottles from use every year. But they have another selling point – they can make a profit for their customers too.
Be WTR's Hecker said its first bottling plant at The Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi saved “more than a million imported bottles per year. This is a major achievement, both in terms of…carbon footprint, but also in generating positive profits for our customers.”
CNBC travel editor Monica Petrelli samples the Nordic waters with CEO Joanna Mattson. The company said that the current statistics on Nordaq's website say that the company has saved about 5.7 billion plastic bottles from use, a statistic based on data extracted from the company's packaging facilities.
Source: ZAPPR
Hecker declined to divulge the price of a bottle of Be WTR, but said it was “competitively priced” with bottled mineral water from Europe.
Nordaq's Mattson says each bottle of water costs between 11 and 21 cents to produce. But water is sold at a much higher price. Providore Singapore sells free-flow still water and Nordaq sparkling water for $2 per person, but some luxury hotels charge four times that price per bottle.
Purezza estimates the cost of producing each of its bottles at about 30 cents, or about one-fifth the price of regular bottled water, according to the company. Sales brochure. But they can be sold for the same price, according to the brochure, which estimates that selling 1,000 bottles of Purezza water at $5 each could net the seller an annual profit of $13,200.
