Will the water bubble burst?

Water sommeliers
The Harbour Hotel’s Chris Baker is keen to educate both his staff and customers on the different varieties available at his restaurants and asserts that water can compliment both the food and wine selection.

“If you are drinking a flat wine you may want a slightly sparking water to clear your palate between courses,” he explains.

“Alternatively, a flat and light bottled water compliments a very fizzy champagne as you would not want your mouth to overreact with the bubbles.”

Baker has held several training sessions with his staff from the hotel’s F&B outlets, in a similar vein as a wine tasting session.

“It’s taken a while for the education to come through but now we’re talking to our staff about which minerals are coming through or how much sodium is in there; suddenly they are realising they like certain waters,” comments Baker.

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“This information can then be passed on to the customer in a similar way as wine knowledge or food recommendations.”

Bottling the image
Image is always important in marketing and visually striking bottles and labelling are key factors in the growth of the bottled water market.

Asker P K from International Hotel Supplies, a company supplying Hildon Natural Mineral Water to hotels and restaurants, says heavy marketing and naming bottled water after natural springs has proved popular with customers.

“Hildon attempts to display the exclusivity it merits and the product is widely used in most of the Sheikh Palaces in the UAE,” he says. “This has led to changes in the design of Hildon’s bottles and labels - and the material of Hildon’s bottle has changed to meet the needs of today’s customers.”

Linking the product to other popular beverages can also help its image.

JM Foods supplies Spayside Glenlivet to five-star hotels. “We decided to look for something unique when looking for our bottled water offerings,” says general manager Robert Mitchell:

“Spayside Glenlivet is sourced near many distilleries of well-known brands of Scotch malt whisky and one ingredient that makes the whisky so special is the purity of the water.”

Bubbling climate
As for the environmental impact of importing various bottles from across the world to the region, the Harbour Hotel’s Baker argues: “In an ideal world we wouldn’t bring the beef in from South Africa or organic chickens from Portugal because it would all be done here - but it isn’t and the ships are going to come in with or without our order.

“What we try to do is offset our footprint as much as we can.”

San Pellegrino’s marketing director Fausto Tazzi adds that “discerning customers demand the most from products and brands they indulge in; they will not accept any compromises”.

So while that debate rages on and the bottled water industry continues to diversify, is the region’s F&B industry justified in fuelling the trend?

Baker concludes: “At the end of the day the bottle water market is essential to us. You have two sets of people in Dubai, the tourist or the ex-pat — and most of them will not drink tap water no matter how safe you tell them it is.”