CASE STUDY: HIBISCUS HOTELS LANZAROTE.

COMPANY

Founded in the early 1980’s, Hibiscus Hotels operates resort hotels in strategic tourist locations offering the finest cuisine with continuously updated facilities to ensure its spaces are fresh and unique. The company’s resort properties on the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands are especially prominent examples.

CHALLENGE

Fresh water sources in the Canary Islands are limited and can inhibit expansion of high water-demand properties such as resort hotels. On-site desalination plants are one of the more cost-effective means to ensure adequate supplies of fresh water. Hibiscus enjoyed a strong growth in resort business, with a parallel growth of fresh water demand. The existing desalination facilities in one of their hotels could not meet this increased demand, so Hibiscus decided to outsource the additional demand to an alternative supplier. Unfortunately, this outsourcing resulted in reduced water quality and increased costs. For these reasons Triton Water Technologies was called in to address the problem.

SOLUTION

Triton Water Technologies performed a detailed onsite analysis of the existing distribution pattern and desalination equipment as well as the increased water demand requirements. As a result, Triton proposed installation of several new components to upgrade the hotel’s water desalination capacity. This upgrade included additional pressure tubes and membranes, pumps and an energy recovery device to increase capacity and reduce overall costs. Also proposed was the inclusion of Triton’s remote management system to ensure day-to-day reliability and reduce ongoing operating costs. Hisbiscus, enjoying past good experience with Triton and its desalination plant solutions in other locations, accepted the proposal.

BENEFITS

The Triton solution increased the available water capacity and allowed Hibiscus to the meet the increased fresh water demands. Triton helped the hotel to further reduced costs by closely timing daily water demands with the equipment installation. The most pronounced benefit of the system upgrade was an overall cost reduction of 60 percent, while at the same time increasing drinking water production 50 percent. Hibiscus has estimated it will realize a payback period of only 1.2 years.