As a bed & breakfast or small hotel owner, you should always look for ways to grow your business. With the uptake of electric vehicles accelerating rapidly, providing EV charging facilities can offer several benefits to your business, which this blog will discuss.
Offering an EV charge point at your B&B/hotel will give you a clear competitive advantage.
If you have charging facilities available, your occupancy rates are likely to increase. EV owners are much more likely to choose your B&B/hotel if it has charging facilities, as opposed to a competitor that doesn’t. Therefore, having a charge point available could be a determining factor in potential guests choosing to stay at your B&B/hotel.
It is only a matter of time before guests expect EV charging facilities in the hotel/B&B industry. Therefore, providing EV charging now will ensure you are one step ahead of the curve and have future-proofed your business.
Offering free EV charging for guests would be a great way to attract visitors, and the cost of charging could easily be factored into the room price.
However, you could also choose to charge guests and the public to use your EV charging facilities. Some smart EV charge points on the market give you the option to monetise the charger, such as the Easee Charge. Therefore, if you decide to charge guests and visitors to use your EV charging facilities, your investment will start to pay you back, and you can generate profit over time.
Zap-Map is a helpful application and website that shows most public EV charge points in the UK. If you decide to make your charging facilities available to the public, you can add your charge points to Zap-Map. By appearing on Zap-Map, your business will show up on the map when individuals are looking for nearby charge points. This increased visibility may increase your revenue as well as your business’ awareness and occupancy rates.
Having EV charging facilities at your hotel/B&B will also attract people who aren’t booked in to stay. As mentioned above, if your EV charging facilities are available on Zap-Map, individuals nearby may come to your B&B/Hotel to use a charge point. If your B&B/hotel has a bar or restaurant, locals who are charging on your premises may then come in for a drink or some food while they wait, increasing your custom.
Furthermore, if your hotel or B&B is located in a rural location, providing charging facilities will improve the overall charging access in your area. Therefore, the increased charging access may attract EV driving tourists to the area, who may not have come otherwise due to the lack of available charging facilities.
By installing EV charging facilities, you are signalling to the public that you are promoting green initiatives and have sustainability goals in place. By showing you are reducing your carbon footprint and thinking sustainably, your brand image will improve, subsequently improving your competitiveness as a business. Moreover, by displaying your green credentials, you may attract more environmentally conscious customers, which in turn, would expand your audience base.
The cost of installing EV charging facilities on your premises may be one of your biggest barriers to doing so. Luckily, the government is expanding the Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) in early 2022 to provide more support for small accommodation businesses looking to install EV charging points.
The Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) reduces the purchase and installation cost of electric vehicle charging points for the workplace by 75%, up to £350 (including VAT) per socket, with a maximum of 40 grants available.
To be eligible for the grant:
We Power Your Business – tailored EV charging solutions.
Our EV charge point sales and installation services for businesses come with a whole range of support and assistance. We offer a completely personalised solution that will suit your individual setup and needs. Your business, your choice.
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This type of electric charger has it's own cable to charge your car.
This type of electric charger requires a seperate cable to charge your car.
Spread over a 60 month period.
Tenants and homeowners are eligible for finance.
You decide the amount of months.
Minimum of £1000.
We will contact you to process the credit application. Approval is subject to application, financial circumstances and borrowing history. 13.9% APR representative. T&Cs apply.
Your order is not confirmed until your application has been approved.
We lay SWA cable laid at 600mm deep, with a protective cable warning tape laid 150mm above the cable. These are laid on a sand or sifted sand soil bed then backfilled.
We position overhead cables at a minimum height of 3.5m and are run along a catenary wire. The cable run should not be accessible to vehicles.
Standard Installation
Our instant price is fixed if it falls within our standard installation package plus any additions that you have selected (extra cabling for example). This package covers the majority of homes in the UK. Before we undertake your installation we will carry out a digital survey to check that nothing has been missed. After reviewing the survey results some additional work may be required in order to complete your installation safely and to the required standards. If this is the case, we will contact you well before the installation date and advise the cost of any required work. You can then continue with your installation, or alternatively we will refund you in full if you do not want to proceed.
Included in our standard installation is :
• Fitting of a single phase charge point to a brick or plaster wall or other suitable permanent structure
• Up to 10 metres of cable, run and neatly clipped to the wall between the electricity supply meter / distribution board and the charge point.
• Routing of the cable through a drilled hole in a wall up to 500mm (20 inches) thick if this is needed.
• The fitting and testing of electrical connections and protections required for the charge point.
• An additional three way consumer unit, if required
• Installation of a Type A RCBO in an RCBO enclosure
• Up to 3 metres of plastic trunking to conceal interior wiring.
• An O-pen earth protection device if the charge point requires it. (This is NOT an earth rod)
• Up to 4 hours of labour from your installer to complete the work.
• Electrical testing of the whole installation.
• Handover and setup of the charge point and any app that may be needed.
Not included in our standard installation (additional work) :
• Where the installation requires additional cabling over and above the amount you have told us about.
• Upgrade/replacement of the main incoming supply fuse where the local DNO (eg Northern Powergrid) would need to attend site.
• If the charge point is to be mounted on a post/pedestal rather than an existing wall and where you have not selected a post as an extra cost option in your order.
• Installation of a charge point to a three phase supply.
• Where gas and water mains bonding (earthing) is not in place at your property. If this is not in place, additional work would be required before installation of the charge point.
• Any groundwork that has not been selected during the order process.
A Surge Protection Device is not included in our standard installation.
What else you need to know :
• On the day of installation, please ensure that the area around your consumer unit (fuse box), incoming electricity supply meter and proposed charge point location (including where the cable is expected to be run) is clear and free of obstructions.
• We will need your WiFi password as part of the installation process in order to connect your charge point to the internet. Please have this available for the installer. Details will not be kept.
• The charge point must be on your own designated off road parking.
• The charger will be fixed in line with current guidelines at a height where it cannot be hit by a vehicle.
• Our installers are not able to enter loft spaces; lift floorboards or flooring; take apart any furniture of work above a height of 2m. If you anticipate that any of this may be required, then please contact us and we can discuss in more detail and provide you with a quotation.
• Should there be extreme weather conditions our installers may not be able to continue with you installation if it is not safe to do so (for example flooding). They will always do their best to complete the work where they can.
If you have any questions then please contact our customer service team who will be happy to help. Please also read our terms and conditions.
