EV Charging for Hotels
For a hotel, EV charging is not an electrical project — it is a booking decision. Drivers filter for it, arrive on it, and increasingly choose between two otherwise identical properties on whether they can leave in the morning with a full battery. The good news is that hotels have the easiest charging profile of any commercial site: guests arrive in the evening and leave after breakfast, which is twelve hours of dwell time on a 7kW charger.
We supply hotel-suitable chargers from £469, with contactless payment options, free UK delivery and trade pricing on multi-unit orders.
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How many charging bays should a hotel have?
Start with two to four bays for a typical 40 to 80 room property, and plan the supply and cable routes for more. The pattern to design around is overnight occupancy rather than peak demand: guests plug in at 7pm and unplug at 9am, so a bay serves one car per night. If your bays are consistently full by evening, that is the signal to add more — and it will come sooner than you expect. Position them where they are visible from reception or the entrance, both because guests need to find them and because visible charging is a selling point to everyone who drives past.
7kW or 22kW for a hotel?
7kW is usually sufficient and lets you install more bays for the same money and the same supply. Over a twelve-hour overnight stay a 7kW charger adds far more range than any guest needs. Where 22kW earns its place is daytime turnover — restaurants, spas, conference and events business, or day guests — because it serves several vehicles in the time a 7kW unit serves one. Many properties mix the two: 22kW nearest the entrance for short stays, 7kW across the rest of the car park for overnight guests.
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Free for guests, or paid?
Both work, and the answer usually follows your room rate. Offering charging as an included amenity is a genuine differentiator on booking sites and costs less per night than most people assume. Charging for it makes sense on higher-turnover sites or where you want to deter non-guests from using the bays. If you do bill drivers, two routes exist: a contactless payment terminal from £335, or a charger with the terminal built in — the Rolec Securicharge contactless range from £2,455, or the Nayax EV Meter Pay at £1,320. Billing per kWh also requires MID-certified metering in the charger, which is a purchase decision and cannot be added later — see our guide to MID metering and billing. A third option, common in hotels, is to keep charging free but restrict it with RFID cards issued at check-in.
Stopping non-guests using the bays
An open charge point in a hotel car park will attract local drivers. RFID access from £7 per card is the simplest control — reception hands out a card with the room key and takes it back at checkout. Contactless payment achieves the same thing by pricing outsiders in rather than locking them out, and turns the bays into a small revenue line. What rarely works is signage alone.
Wall-mounted or pedestal?
Hotel car parks rarely have a wall where the bays are, which is why pedestal chargers are so common on hospitality sites. The Evec ESP02 single socket 22kW pedestal is £1,465 and the EDP02-N dual socket £1,615; the 7.4kW versions are £1,120 and £1,300. The alternative is a wall-mounted unit on a mounting post from £240. Either way, add crash barriers from £155 — guests reversing into an unfamiliar car park in the dark is exactly the scenario barriers exist for.
Is there a grant for hotel EV charging?
Yes, with a caveat. The Workplace Charging Scheme provides up to £350 per socket, capped at 40 sockets, for businesses — but it is intended for staff and fleet charging rather than public or guest pay-per-use. Many hotels install under WCS for staff bays and fund guest bays separately. It is worth taking advice on how your particular scheme is structured before applying, because the eligibility rules turn on who uses the chargepoint.
Talk to us about your property
Tell us how many rooms and parking spaces you have, whether the site is single or three phase, and whether you want guests to pay, and we will specify it and price it. We supply hotels and hospitality sites across the UK with free delivery and trade pricing on multi-unit orders.