A big topic of debate about the transition to electric mobility is the infrastructure of charging points and the need to expand it to provide more services to current and potential users of electric vehicles.
This new green mobility is forcing us to innovate, and companies do not want to be left behind when it comes to offering the best services to their customers. Also, we all must comply with the European legislations, like the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR), and the local ones.
There is still a lot of misinformation about electric vehicles and a fear among non-users of running out of battery power while driving. We have discussed this topic before, and we even have testimonials from EV users who have told us about their summer holidays in an electric car. But now we were looking for data to confirm or deny some of our impressions.
So, last September, we carried out a small survey among our users in Spain and France about accommodation with charging points and this is the result...
Accommodation with charging points evaluated by EV users
Did you use your electric car for a holiday road trip?
This question, answered by 2,444 Electromaps users, shows that 74.4% of them went on holiday in their electric vehicle, compared to 25.6% who either did not go on holiday or used another means of transport.
Do you check if your place of accommodation has charging points?
Typically, one of the most common pieces of advice given to electric vehicle users is to plan the trip well, with several options in case of changes along the way, so that you can charge without stress. It is also often advisable to look for accommodation that will allow you to charge overnight, so that you can have the car ready for the next day and any plans you may have.
So when 92.9% of respondents said they always (71.1%) or often (21.8%) checked to see if their accommodation had a charging point, we were not too surprised.
Antonio Zapatero, owner of a hybrid Outlander, told us that last summer he travelled from Madrid to Murcia (Spain), "always stopping for breakfast with an EV charge, and at the destination looking for a hotel with a charger. Thanks to this, all the journeys from the hotel to the beach and sightseeing were made in EV without polluting the environment.”
Evaluating charging experience experience in hotels, camping sites and cottages
When it comes to assessing the charging experience in their chosen accommodation, be it hotels, campsites, country houses or holiday homes, the answers are a little more varied...
18.6% of respondents admitted that they had never charged in an accommodation away from home. And among the remaining users, the opinion is quite divided. 39.8% rate their experience as very good (8.8%) or good (31.0%). While 32.6% rate it as fair, the remaining 9.1% rate it as poor (7.2%) or very poor (1.9%).
The good news is that we have the data and the perfect solution to improve the hotel charging experience.
Electromaps is where most users check the charging points in accommodations
That's right, 56.5% of drivers use the Electromaps app to check if their chosen accommodation has charging points. In fact, Ángel Olbés, a KIA eNiro user, recently told us how he found his accommodation on a trip to Galicia (Spain) by searching for a slow charging point on Electromaps.
27.8% prefer to check if their accommodation has charging points directly on the hotel's website, and only 10.9% of our respondents check on the usual hotel booking pages.
You already know that the app shows thousands of charging points with information on the type of plug and the charging power it offers, as well as real-time information on the status of the point for all those connected to Electromaps, and the set price.
These are the most striking figures from our mini-survey, but let's take a look at other opinions and demands we have collected from electric vehicle users.
What do electric car drivers want from accommodation?
In fact, most of the demands we read in the nearly three thousand comments we received are similar. We summarise those we consider to be the most important:
1. More charging points in hotels, campsites and rural guest houses
One of the great advantages of electric vehicles is that they can be charged while users are sleeping, eating or taking a walk. But it is advisable to do it in a proper charger, although we know that a Schuko as an emergency, can get us out of some trouble.
Pedro, driver of a Hyundai Kona, knows this well and confesses that "as I love going to rural houses, and many still don't have a charging base, I always carry a 25-metre extension cable for a Schuko with me, in case I can't park near the socket.”
And he is not the only one. We have rescued one of the hundreds of tweets on the subject, in which Carlos, owner of a Tesla, charged his electric car in the car park of his chosen hotel, but without a charging point. This is the translation of his tweet: “This weekend I'm staying with family in a hotel that doesn't have electric car chargers🔌, and the reception staff told me I could use the plugs on the columns (which I did).”
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2. Free charges for guests
"It is remarkable how many hotels and restaurants offer free charging to their guests," said Mr and Mrs Tarrés, owners of an Audi Q4 e-tron.
In fact, 61.8% of our respondents are of the opinion that the charging cost should be free of charge for guests staying in a hotel, guesthouse or campsite. 19.9% say it should be included in the price of parking. And 18.3% believe that the price should be reduced for guests.
3. Charging points with different power outputs and connectors
As a hotel or campsite is a place where you stay overnight, it is usually assumed that a slow charging is best for the user staying there. However, the reality is that we are not taking into account the inevitable increase in demand over the next few years, nor are we taking into account other customers of other hotel services such as the restaurant, cafeteria, meeting rooms, spa, etc.
On many occasions, the driver will want to charge faster or with different connectors, and hotels should be able to offer this service in some of their chargers.
4. Maintenance of charging points and monitoring of usage
One of the drawbacks that electric vehicle users generally face when it comes to charging is that charging points often experience problems that prevent charging and take weeks to resolve.
Another common complaint is the abuse of parking at the charging point. The car should only be parked there when it is being charged. But sometimes some users 'conveniently' forget that the charge has finished and that another user may also need to charge.
This tweet from All Electric is an example of bad practice, with an electric car taking up four spaces meant for charging: “Occupying 4 Supercharger posts at the Hotel Landa near Burgos for over 2 hours while there was a queue to charge. What an angel.😡”
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Therefore, monitoring both the maintenance of the EV charger and its correct use is one of the requests made to hotels and other accommodation facilities by the surveyed users.
5. More information about charging points
Just because there is a charging point does not mean it is compatible with your vehicle. Or maybe you cannot use it because it does not have a cable. The driver may think it is free because there is no mention of the price of the charge or the conditions... There can be an infinite number of incompatibilities, incidents or misunderstandings that can be avoided by providing all the information as clearly as possible to give a better service in line with the user's expectations.
Remember that at Electromaps we offer the possibility of not only installing and managing the charging points with our software, but also connecting the ones you already have in your hotel, and our app provides all the information about the charging points. We suggest you take a look at the case of Hotel Vichy Catalán and draw your own conclusions.
And if you need more reasons to install charging points in your accommodation, here are a few more.
