The Westin Detroit Airport appears to have replaced the complimentary bottled water it used to leave in rooms with an empty glass carafe and a placard telling guests to refill it at water stations on each floor.
- They’re making an environmental pitch
- To make a worse guest experience palatable
- In the name of cost-cutting
Here’s a review on TripAdvisor noting this:
The complimentary bottle of water they used to leave in the room is gone.
Are you kidding me?
Instead, they now leave a glass carafe so you can fill it with tap water, which frankly tastes terrible. I’m guessing that carafe probably cost the hotel $10 (and likely disappears or get broken often), while the bottle of water they eliminated probably cost them pennies.
It just feels cheap — and that’s not a great look for a hotel charging $500 a night.
This is the modern U.S. hotel industry in a single image: remove something cheap – at premium room rates, the cost of a bottle of water is trivial – then make the guest do more work, and tell you that you’re morally inadequate if you complain.
And it’s especially bad at an airport hotel, where people arrive late, dehydrated, and exhausted. In-room water is basic hospitality.
And the hallway water station is not equivalent. A sealed bottle is convenient, predictable, and likely sanitary. A reused glass carafe is probably not. Maybe it was cleaned thoroughly?
I’ll be blunt. That carafe is not actually being cleaned between stays. At best, you do not actually know. Hotels are asking customers to trust cleaning standards, and I bet you’ll find plenty of other areas in the room that were missed (at best). I don’t use in-room coffee makers for the same reason.
The sign says “Fill it Forward” and “Proudly B Corp Certified.” If you see this as a friction or a downgrade, the problem is your values. Yet if the goal was actually to reduce plastic not to cut costs, there are plenty of things they’d be doing instead:
- boxed water
- canned water
- sealed glass bottles
- one complimentary bottle in the room plus refill stations for anyone who wants them. (And a log showing sanitization and maintenance on those machines.)
I’ve been to several hotels that want to eschew bottled water but not actually view it as a cut, like the Andaz Maui and the Seabird where they’ve given new bottles to use and to take with you.
This is not about water. It is about hotels monetizing brand equity built over decades, that the big chains now allow to be squandered for a quick revenue boost. As Marriott’s CEO put it, ‘they’ll put net rooms growth on my tombstone.’ The problem is, when the brand no longer stands for quality and predictability, guests no longer go to the website to book properties carrying its flag. And then they have nothing left to sell to the very properties they’re so desperate to sign on that they refuse to enforce quality standards.
Hotels raise rates while stripping away costs – whether it’s water, housekeeping, or alarm clocks by the bedside. There are things that used to distinguish a full service stay from something cheaper, like robes, slippers, bar soap, laundry bags, and room service. Each cut is small, but together eliminate the differentiation from select service properties or Airbnb.
Guests don’t remember the card beside the bed telling you not to have housekeeping change the sheets, the one in the bathroom telling you to reuse your towels the next day, or the commitment not to giveyou a bottle of water. They remember paying premium rates and learning that even the bottle of water has been turned into a hallway errand, with more germs along the way than the monkey in Outbreak.
Most hotels have filtered water dispensers on each floor. Or bring your own water bottle to refill. I think you are getting upset over nothing.
I have to say I’m torn here. Society does use too much single use plastic, and I already have more reusable bottles at home — if hotels gave them out I would be buried in them or would just throw them away. The first time I encountered the carafe practice – at the Hyatt Regency in Malta – it did feel like a sincere attempt and in line with what their own citizens do. Plus, housekeeping filled it for me every day, so it felt less like cost cutting.
I actually don’t have a problem with this. It DOES benefit the environment.
I carry a Nalgene bottle. If there is filtered water in the floor where I’m staying, I’ll just fill it up
Until they can perfect a plastic bottle that is truly decomposable, we are just putting too much plastic into our waste streams
Ah the old sustainability euphemism again. I admire any company that cuts costs if they are honest about it and in some way a company manages to translate this cost savings into a better customer experience or substantially reduced room rate. So did this savings translate to a chocolate on the pillow, a fresh baked cookie, at check in, or a happy hour drink?
I think we all know and have our answer
Caption by Hyatt Central Sydney does the same (but they also put a bottle of Australian Chardonnay as a gift in the fridge).
I also have a colleague who refuses to drink water from plastic bottles because large amount of micro- and nanoplastic it contains.
Hilton Garden Inn Krakow Airport has the same thing. Got beverages from the connivence store in the terminal. <$3 for a half liter sport bottle, could be worse.
Actually. This is where i think Gary is so stuck in his American hypocondriac ways that frankly bottled water is such a disparaging effect on the environment in the guide of ”safety”. No. Get a glass and fill it from the tap or filters water tap. Even at airport hotels. This is simple.
Frankly i wish ALL bottled water is banned regardless of the container. It’s not necessary. It’s just laziness and marketing to sell more stuff needlessly.
I remember when bottled water was not a thing. It was the beverage companies saying tap water is bad. Not the case when they use the same thing and bottle it. For profit.
I’m not sure why people need bottled water in the first place. Most of it is just tap water poured into a plastic bottle anyway. Yes, we can argue “it’s filtered,” but we have among the safest and cleanest water supplies in the world. Why waste our time ensuring clean drinking water if everyone is going to insist on bottled tap water.
Let’s say you are someone who does not care about drinking tap or tap filtered water. Have you ever seen the videos of how they clean glasses left in a room. There is no way I would ever consider using this no matter how filtered the water is.
What do y’all not understand about boxed water?
@Leonard then maybe you should never use anything that has been washed for reuse. You think restaurants, airline clubs, bars, anywhere does a much better job of cleaning? Hotels are required to follow local Health Department standards for cleaning and sanitation of reusable things like drinkware.
@Gary I understand that boxed water is just another variation on bottled water. Mostly filtered tap water that people have been tricked into thinking is safer and healthier so they’ll pay for it. It isn’t. When is the last time we had a major water contamination issue in the US public water system that sickened people (other than the lead pipe issue for the poor folks living in Flint from several years ago)?
The carafes are a brand standard at Canopy by Hilton, though I find properties also keep a stash of plastic bottles at front desk to keep elites demanding their free water quiet. (The T&Cs actually omit Canopy brand from water benefit.)
Here’s the issue in a nutshell. A property that cares only about the environment would do this. A property that only cares about money would do this. Most properties are some combination of the two. So, is this about dollars or the environment???? No way to tell.
its everywhert.and lt is what gary says.i dont want to walk 20 doors to fill a carafe at 1am
Ah, yet another example of degrading the customer experience in the name of the environment, sustainability or similarly vacuous sloganeering.
I refuse the bottled water at every hotel. Cuz. Less plastic and better for you not to drink plastic bottled water.
If SFO wanted to actually be ground breakibg in thier climate goals. They would not allow ANY packaged water to be sold. Instead a 20-30 dollar nalgene type bottle to fill at the tap.
All soft drinks are from a machine into a compostable paper cup and straw.
This is simple. And easy. Saves money and reduces our waste.
@Gary Leff it’s easy to know why people don’t understand about boxed water. Half the posters on here immediately knee-jerk frame this argument into a political ie virtue signalling about plastic bottles, environmental, etc.
By the way, aren’t plastic bottles recyclable?
Same argument for the elimination of small lotions and soaps. Just cost-cutting and calling it green. Just got back from Grand Hyatt Tokyo and we got 8 bottles of water replenished daily in our suite. So nice to not have to fetch our own water at the end of a long day walking.
1) The whole premise of your article (cost cutting now masquerades as sustainability) is undercut by the TripAdvisor review you’ve chosen to include. If glass carafes are more expensive than plastic bottles that cost pennies, how is this hotel cutting costs? (The reviewer also contradicts themself in much the same way by suggesting the addition of a $10 carafe and the removal of a bottle costing pennies somehow “feels cheap”.)
2) In any event, two things can be true at once. What’s the issue with a sustainability initiative that also saves costs?
3) While reducing plastic waste can be overcome by the alternatives you outlined, each of those options still (presumably) has a higher negative environmental impact than a reusable glass carafe. Despite being recyclable, boxed and canned water bottles will almost certainly end up in landfill, to say nothing of the environmental impact from their manufacturing.
4) A log? Seriously? How’s that any different to a hotel housekeeper checking a box on their task sheet saying a room has been appropriately serviced?
5) That’s not how bullet points are used (at the top of the article).
Ok if you cut plastic bottled water then bring sealed glass bottled water that has no aftertaste or arsenic in it
If those of you wish to drink tap go for it not I
Hard pass for me
I will never stay @ that Westin what a rip off and the breakfast sucks there too.
@Isaac — It’s “Umm ackchually…”
The obsession with bottled water in a country where tap water is safe to drink is ridiculous. They put filtered water stations on every floor and having to refill a bottle is what gets your panties in a bunch? Bottled water in plastic containers is not healthy due to leaching and causes tremendous environmental harm. If you want bottled water that’s fine, but the idea that it should be an obligation and that providing an alternative safe solution is unacceptable is the most whiny and entitled take I’ve ever seen in a travel article. That’s a low bar.
Hotels are a “hospitality” business. Does anyone still know what that means? A friendly smile, clean room, a bar of soap, shampoo, good coffee, and a drink of cool water. I could not care less whether it is from a can, box, bottle or in a glass from the faucet.
Oh my…the things that distress people. The Thompson Nashville has provided the carafe in lieu of bottled water (in room) for years and I have not yet expired! Of course, I carry my own, cleaned at home, water bottle so perhaps that’s why?
I really don’t understand some people’s love for plastic water but to each her/his own…until we discover microplastics are harmful. Oh, wait…