How to Make Hotel EV Charging Points Profitable

It is half past six in the car park of a hotel off the motorway. By seven the four charge points are taken, by ten most cars are full, and still they stay on the cable until after breakfast. The guest who arrives at eight finds no free bay and emails reception. Your statement only shows kilowatt hours, as if the bay had freed up at ten.

That is the core problem with charging at a hotel. The scarce resource is the bay during the arrival window, and a tariff that only counts kWh cannot see it.

Why does a hotel charger earn so little on a per kWh price?

Because a per kWh price only bills the hours in which the car is charging, while a hotel guest occupies the bay all night. The pattern is well documented. The European Commission's Joint Research Centre, working with ElaadNL, analysed 1.8 million charging sessions at Dutch public charge points over six years. In the 2019 publication, 61.4 percent of the time a car was connected turned out to be idle: the battery was full, but the car stayed. The time of plugging in was among the three most influential factors. Cars connected late in the evening or early in the morning sat idle the longest.

At a hotel this is simply normal use. The guest plugs in on arrival and unplugs at checkout. On an ordinary AC point the charging takes a few hours, while the parking lasts until the next morning. If you only bill kWh, you sell the smallest part of what the guest uses.

An example with round numbers makes it visible. Take an 11 kW charge point and a kWh price of 0.40 euro excluding VAT. Guest A eats in the restaurant, charges 33 kWh between seven and ten in the evening and drives off. Guest B charges the same 33 kWh but stays until ten the next morning. Both pay 13.20 euro. Guest A used the bay for three hours, guest B for fifteen, twelve of them without charging.

How do you make hotel charging points profitable?

Hotel charging points become profitable when the tariff bills time in the bay, and not only the energy delivered. Combine a per kWh price that covers energy and grid costs with a time component that moves with demand for bays: higher during the arrival window and in the daytime, low or zero at night when nobody else needs the bay. Tie a charging bay to the room booking through a reservation, and give regular business guests a member rate. That way whoever holds a bay on a busy evening pays for that scarcity, and charging stays cheap on evenings with room to spare.

Destination charging is charging at a place where the driver stays for a long time anyway, such as a hotel, a restaurant or an office, so that parking time far exceeds charging time. For that kind of charge point, time is the right unit of account, and that is exactly where most hotel tariffs are still stuck on kWh.

Hotels already know the principle. A room costs more on a trade fair night than on a quiet Sunday, and nobody finds that odd because the price is fixed at booking. A charging bay can be priced the same way: per night, at a price that depends on how many electric guests are expected that evening, and fixed at the moment the guest books or plugs in. There is more on that logic in the piece on what charge point operators can learn from airline revenue management.

What does AFIR allow you to charge?

AFIR allows a price per kWh, per minute and per session on charge points below 50 kW, which is the power most hotels work with. The regulation, (EU) 2023/1804, has applied since 13 April 2024. It requires the components to be shown in that order, possibly followed by other price components, and the driver has to know them before the session starts. From 50 kW upwards the ad hoc price must be based on kWh. On top of that you may add an occupancy fee per minute to discourage long occupancy.

In its questions and answers on AFIR, the European Commission clarifies two points that matter for hotels. An occupancy fee that runs from the start of the session does not appear proportional to the aim of discouraging long occupancy, and is assessed case by case. Car parks of restaurants and shops that are open to anyone intending to become a customer generally count as publicly accessible, while spaces reserved for a limited and determinate group do not. A hotel car park open to anyone who books or comes to eat sits close to the first category. Check your own situation, because the AFIR rules on price information would then apply to you.

Which tariff structure suits which hotel?

It depends on how often every bay is taken at the same time. The table sets the three common options side by side.

The third row is the only one that treats both the overnight guest and the day visitor correctly. At night the time component drops to zero, because nobody is competing for the bay. During the arrival window and in the daytime, when meeting guests and passing drivers arrive, every occupied minute counts. Keep a floor and a ceiling that you publish in advance, so the guest knows where they stand.

Be honest about the limits of this story too. If your charge points are rarely all full at once, a demand driven time component yields little. The return then mostly lies in the room bookings you do not lose. In a 2022 survey by Kantar and Virta among British EV drivers, only 5 percent said charging availability at a hotel does not affect their booking choice. Price is one lever alongside the number of points, the power and the reliability. For overnight guests, several AC points with load balancing often do more than a single fast charger, especially once you factor in the capacity tariff on your grid connection.

Where does an energy price tracking tariff belong?

At a hotel, such a tariff belongs as a member discount for regular guests, not as the base rate. A price that follows the energy market plus a fixed margin looks attractive because night hours are often cheaper. But it ignores demand for bays: it sits low on the evening the car park is full and the late arrival finds nothing. It also exposes your entire margin to market swings.

For a business guest who returns every week and can time their charging, it is a good product, as a discount on top of a demand aware base rate. The same goes for the idea behind a charging discount during negative power prices. For a one-off guest or a roaming customer paying with a charging card, the demand aware tariff remains the base.

What would you do differently on Monday?

Start with your own session data, not with a new tariff. These four steps give you an answer within a week.

1. Pull a month of CDRs and set connection time against charging time for every session. The difference is the idle time you currently give away.
2. Count the evenings on which every bay was taken at once, and note what was happening at the hotel on those evenings.
3. If those evenings are rare, keep the kWh price and add a member rate. If they are frequent, introduce a time component that applies during the arrival window and in the daytime and drops to zero at night, and offer charging bay reservations with the room booking.
4. Publish the rule at the unit and in the booking confirmation, so the guest knows the price before plugging in.

Want to know what that would yield on your own charge points first? The free potential analysis runs the numbers on your own utilisation, and the platform walkthrough shows how demand aware tariffs work within a floor and a ceiling. If you want the basics first, read the piece on the utilisation rate at which a charge point breaks even.