If your thoughts have turned to where in the UK you can escape to once you’ve booked that precious time off work, you might be pleased to hear there are an increasing number of hotels with electric car charging points across the country.
Indeed, of the more than 59,000 charging devices on Zapmap, over 3,500 of them – as of April 2024 – are associated with hotels or very similar accommodation. That’s around 6% of all electric car charging devices in the UK.
So what do we know about these hotels with electric car charging facilities? Which hotel brands should you look out for? Where in the country should you head to? And which networks provide the charging facilities? Well, lower down we’ve broken down some of the figures for you in a few different ways.
To find hotels with electric car charging points across the UK, navigate to Filters on the Zapmap app or desktop map, select Location types, choose Accommodation and press Apply.
Where are the hotels with electric car charging points?
At the time of writing, there are over 32,000 EV charging locations across the UK. Of those locations, around 1,750 are associated with hotels or other accommodation.
You can find these charging locations up and down the UK. However, while their spread is relatively even, it’s worth noting that hotel charging locations in Northern Ireland, and counties such as Lincolnshire and Shropshire, are fewer and further between.
In contrast, the South West, South East and Scotland have a larger number of charge points located at hotels or other accommodation.
The South West has more hotels with electric car charging points than other areas.
The top 10 cities & towns for hotels with electric car charging in the UK
Zooming in a little to town level, the chart below highlights the top 10 cities and towns in the UK for EV charging locations associated with hotels.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Greater London is comfortably in the lead, with 74 hotel locations where you can charge your electric car. In second and third place are York with with 16 locations and Cheltenham with 15.
At the other end, Edinburgh, Bath and Nottingham each have 11 charging locations associated with hotels or other similar accommodation.
It’s all to play for, however, because Birmingham (14 locations), Newquay (14), Windermere (13) and Bournemouth (12) are not far ahead by any means.
Hotels with EV charging: Which brands have the most charging locations?
Although the majority of hotels with electric car charging points are independent or part of small chains (1,424 locations), it’s worth looking at the larger chains to see which brand comes out on top.
The chart below shows the hotel brands with the highest number of charging locations in the UK.
As you can see from the chart, some brands are much further ahead than others on the EV charging front.
Premier Inn leads with 106 EV charging locations, followed by Holiday Inn with 76, and Best Western with 59. At the other end of the scale, Marriott has four EV charging locations available on Zapmap, behind Travelodge (five) and Radisson Blu (nine).
Premier Inn continues to be the one to watch here, adding around 35 charging locations at hotels since July 2023. Indeed, in 2021, Whitbread – owner of the Premier Inn hotels – appointed ENGIE to install 1,000 50kW rapid chargers at its hotels around the UK, with 600 committed across 300 hotels over the next two years.
Which networks have EV charging devices at hotels?
Of course, an important consideration for many electric car drivers is the network that is providing the charging facilities.
While around 40 charge point operators offer EV charging at hotels, the share of these devices between the networks isn’t as even as you might think. The chart below splits out charging devices at hotels by network.
As the chart shows, the Tesla Destination network has the most electric car charging devices at hotels, with 614. In second and third place are Pod Point and bp pulse, with 299 and 297 devices respectively. Interestingly, these three networks account for 35% of all EV charging devices at hotels.
In fact, Tesla has partnered with a number of high-end hotels – the Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath, for instance – to offer destination charging for guests, generally providing a standard Type 2 charge point for non-Tesla drivers too. bp pulse‘s rollout of charge points includes Holiday Inn destinations. These – often rapid – charging devices are explicitly available for all to use, not only Holiday Inn customers.
Teslas charge at the Carbis Bay Hotel in Cornwall.
Charity ZeroNet, in fourth place (178 hotel charging devices), provides charge points for the hospitality and leisure sector. Much of its network, a total of more than 359 charging devices, is free for customers. Indeed, some hotels and B&Bs provide free EV charging points for guests. If this is a priority, it’s worth checking on Zapmap before you book.
Other operators providing electric car charging facilities at accommodation across the UK include Zap-Pay partner GeniePoint, which operates 85 electric vehicle charging devices at hotels, behind Monta (93), the Tesla-only Supercharger network (114) and VendElectric (114).
Around 1,750 EV charging locations across the UK are associated with hotels.
And before you rush off to book your holiday – remember to check Zapmap and, in particular, the user comments to get useful insights on the details of particular charge points.
You could even leave one yourself, for the next guests who arrive.
Third party use: this data can be used by third parties as long as the source is attributed to Zapmap and, if online, a link is added back to https://www.zap-map.com.
