UK: A report by SMS plc, which provides solar technology to businesses including EV charging stations, has found that 77 per cent of EV drivers would be willing to pay for an EV concierge service at a hotel.
The research also found 48 per cent of UK electric car drivers would not stay at a hotel without on-site EV charging points.
Currently there are 1.3 million fully electric or hybrid cars on UK roads and this figure is expected to reach 11 million by 2030.
There are around 48,450 EV charging stations in the UK but figures from July this year showed less than 7 per cent of these were at hotels.
According to SMS 29 per cent of electric car drivers had used hotel EV charging stations and 38 per cent said they expected as a guest at the hotel for the service to be free of charge. However, 24 per cent said they would be happy to pay for their charge by redeeming hotel reward points.
Further findings of the research include:
83 per cent said they expected to wait for an EV charging point at a hotel;
38 per cent said they didn’t mind waiting for an hour;
26 per cent said they didn’t mind waiting 2 hours;
77 per cent of EV drivers would be willing to pay for an EV concierge service at a hotel in order to limit the inconvenience caused by waiting.
Research for SMS plc was conducted in April this year by Insight Avenue. The aim was to explore the current customer experience of using, and relying on, public EV charging in the UK. Over 1,000 consumers in the UK that either drive their own or their company’s EV or Plug-in-Hybrid completed the questions.
In June Exclusive Collection partnered with RAW Charging to install EV chargers at five of its venues, this month Village Hotels partnered with IONITY, to install hundreds of chargers across its portfolio and Hilton recently announced it would be installing around 20,000 Tesla charging points at 2,000 hotels across the Americas.
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