A hotel owner gets a charger sales pitch. It happens every week somewhere, usually with the words "no cost to you" in the first slide. If I had five minutes with that owner, here's what I'd say.
First question: what are they actually selling you?
There are two very different products hiding under the word "charging."
One is chargers, installed. You buy them (or finance them), they go in your parking lot, and they are yours.
The other is a service: a company installs chargers on your property at no cost to you and runs them as its business. You get a small cut of revenue or a flat fee, or sometimes just the amenity.
The pitch rarely makes the difference obvious. Figure out which one you're looking at before you look at anything else.
Why "no capex" is so tempting
The no-capex option sounds like all upside. Chargers show up, guests are happy, you didn't write a check. In a hotelier's head, that's free amenity money.
The reality is you're giving part of your business to someone else to run on your land, when you don't have to.
Don't sublease your parking lot
If you own your land, or have a lease that gives you control of it, you have the thing every charging company needs: a site.
When you sign up for the no-cost model, you're effectively subleasing that space to a company to operate on. They set the price. They keep most of the revenue. They decide what happens when a charger breaks. And the deal usually runs for years.
For a business that already controls its land, that trade rarely makes sense anymore.
Owning is easier than it used to be
Charging stations have become easy enough to operate yourself, if you choose the right vendors and give it some time.
The model I'd push a hotel owner toward: find a vendor who will install the chargers and work with you to get the site up and running. Then you own the operations, 100%.
Why hotels in particular
Hotels have two advantages over most charging businesses.
The first is power. A hotel already has an electrical service and a utility bill. The chargers' consumption blends into the property's existing usage, which helps the economics in a way a standalone charging site can't match.
The second is cash flow. A hotel has a different cash flow profile from a startup charging network. It can carry a project like this on its own balance sheet instead of giving away the upside.
Paying for it
"No upfront cost" isn't only available from the no-capex company. Financing gets you the same thing without giving up ownership. The cost is amortized over a five, seven or ten-year term, and it fits into your capex or opex budget without much thought.
The financing guide walks through the options, and the SBA loan calculator shows what a payment looks like with your own numbers. The site planner puts the whole project together, costs to revenue.
The hard part
The hard part is finding a good vendor. That's where asking the right people pays off: other owners who have done it, operators who have lived with the hardware, installers who have seen what breaks.
Whichever route you go, get straight answers to these before you sign:
- Who owns the chargers, today and at the end of the contract?
- Who sets the price drivers pay?
- Who keeps the revenue, and how is your share calculated?
- Who pays the electric bill, including demand charges?
- What happens if you want out, sell the property, or need the parking back?
If the answers to most of those are "not you," you're not getting free chargers. You're renting out your parking lot at a discount.
