EV Charging for Hotels and Resorts

Amenity or revenue

As an amenity, charging competes with other guest-experience spending and is judged on whether guests choose you. As revenue, it competes with nearby charging and is judged on utilisation. Deciding which changes the design and the pricing.

You almost certainly do not need DC

Overnight and multi-hour stays mean AC delivers everything the guest needs, at a fraction of the capital and supply demand. Destination properties installing fast charging are usually solving a problem they do not have.

The reception problem

When a charger does not work, a guest asks reception, and reception has no visibility into it. Without someone who can see charger status and a defined escalation route, the amenity becomes a source of complaints about the property.

What guests actually want

• To know before booking that charging exists and is likely to be free.
• To use it without downloading anything on arrival.
• Not to find the bay occupied by a car that finished charging hours ago.
• A clear answer at reception when something does not work.

Guests notice availability, not speed

A guest who charges is not thinking about kilowatts. They are thinking about whether the point was free when they arrived, and that is the only part of the experience they will mention in a review.

Dwell time at a hotel is measured in hours, so the arithmetic favours more points at lower power over fewer fast ones. The same supply serves more guests, the capital is lower, and no guest has to move a car at eleven at night.

This is our general position rather than a hotel-specific one: availability beats power. It applies most obviously where the car was going to be parked anyway.

Charging as a loyalty benefit

The strongest use of charging at a hotel or resort is not as a revenue line. It is as something you give to the guests you want back.

1. 1

   Free for loyalty members

   Charging included for repeat guests, or for a tier of your programme. It costs you energy and it buys a reason to book you again rather than the property next door.

2. 2

   Free for a defined period

   Included for the first night, or for stays over a certain length. Bounded, predictable, and still a benefit the guest notices.

3. 3

   Paid for everyone else

   Walk-in and non-member charging billed normally, which funds the benefit.

4. 4

   Mixed by property

   Different rules at different sites, which matters for a group where one resort competes on experience and another on rate.

The reason this works is that an EV driver planning a trip filters on charging before they filter on anything else. Being the property that solves it is worth more than the energy costs.

What the software has to do

A loyalty arrangement is a software problem rather than a hardware one, and it is where most destination charging installations stop short.

• Different tariffs for different guest types, applied automatically rather than by someone at reception
• Free, discounted and paid charging on the same points
• Charging appearing on the room bill rather than as a separate transaction
• Reporting per property, so a group can see which sites the benefit actually works at
• Guest access without an app, since a visitor will not install one for one night

We supply the destination charging software as well as the chargers, which is the part that makes the loyalty arrangement possible rather than theoretical.