A Positive Shift: Hotels Taking a Proactive Approach to Water Treatment at Commissioning Stage

A Year of Progress in Hotel Water Safety

Over the past year, we’ve observed a significant improvement across the hospitality sector when it comes to water treatment and system management. Many newly commissioned hotels are now taking a far more proactive approach from day one, ensuring their systems are designed, risk assessed, and controlled effectively before opening their doors.

This shift marks a welcome change that reflects lessons learned from the past, and in particular the COVID and post-COVID era. A stronger industry commitment to compliance, safety, and efficiency is now evident.

Getting It Right at the Commissioning Stage

Traditionally, issues with water systems were often identified after a property was already operational, creating disruption and additional costs. Encouragingly, hotels are now prioritising water safety at the commissioning stage by:

• Carrying out independent risk assessments with qualified consultants.

• Designing systems with treatment in mind – for example, separating out water systems to avoid unnecessary complexity and minimise the potential of cross contamination between systems..

• Implementing a control scheme from day one, rather than retrofitting processes later.

• Completing chlorination, flushing, and validation testing at the initial fill.

This early attention not only ensures compliance with HSG 274 but also helps hotels maintain safe, efficient, and healthy systems from the outset.

A Proactive Industry Mindset

What we’re seeing is not just a change in process, but a broader cultural shift towards prevention rather than reaction. Hotels are taking monitoring, record-keeping, and system design more seriously, embedding robust water treatment practices into their operations.

For us at DSW, it’s encouraging to see this step forward. It reflects the same proactive philosophy we’ve been advocating in previous blog posts, such as:

• The benefits of including a water hygiene specialist at design stage.
• The importance of a robust and up-to-date PPM strategy.
• Steps required after installation to ensure compliance.

Supporting Hotels Through the Whole Process

While the progress is clear, there’s always more that can be done to strengthen compliance and safety. For hotels planning refurbishments or new builds, it’s crucial to get expert input at every stage – system design, system fill, chlorination, validation sampling, risk assessment, control scheme implementation, and beyond.

At DSW, our water treatment and engineering specialists are here to provide guidance and support from the very first step through to long-term system management.

Talk to Us

If you’re opening a new property, refurbishing an existing one, or simply want to review your water treatment approach, we’d be happy to help. Get in touch with our team to discuss how we can ensure your systems are clean, compliant, and fit for the future, right from day one.