A great guest experience doesn't begin at check-in.

It starts when someone discovers your venue, makes a booking and begins planning their visit. It continues through their arrival, their time with you and, ultimately, the journey home.

For guests driving electric vehicles, charging is increasingly part of that journey.

They may be asking whether they can charge before they book. They'll want to know where the chargers are when they arrive. They'll expect them to be straightforward to use. And when it's time to leave, they'll want their vehicle ready for whatever comes next.

For hotels and hospitality venues, this means EV charging shouldn't be viewed as something that simply sits in the car park.

It should be considered as part of the overall guest journey.

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Before the Booking: Can Guests See That You Offer EV Charging?

The EV charging experience can begin before someone has even decided where to stay, eat or visit.

An EV driver planning a trip may consider charging availability alongside familiar questions such as parking, location, facilities and accessibility.

So don't make them search for the information.

If you provide EV charging, make it visible across the channels guests use when making decisions. That could include your:

• website
• facilities page
• FAQs
• booking platforms
• pre-arrival information
• social media

Where appropriate, tell guests how many charge points are available, where they're located and how they can access them.

Connekt also works with e-roaming and EV driver platforms including Zapmap and Octopus Electroverse, helping drivers discover participating charge points through platforms they already use.

For hospitality businesses, that creates an opportunity beyond simply serving guests who have already booked.

Your EV chargers can become another way for EV drivers to discover your venue.

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Before Arrival: Give Guests the Information They Need

Once a guest has booked, think about the questions they'll have before arriving.

Where should I park?

Where do I check in?

What time is breakfast?

And, for an EV driver: where do I charge?

Adding a short section about EV charging to your pre-arrival communications can remove uncertainty before the journey begins.

It doesn't need to be complicated. A guest might simply need to know where the chargers are located, whether they need to bring their own cable, how charging is accessed and where to go if they need help.

Providing that information before arrival makes charging feel like an established part of your guest experience rather than something they need to investigate once they're standing in the car park.

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Arrival: Make the Chargers Easy to Find

Your guest has driven for several hours and finally arrives.

This isn't the moment to send them on a tour of the car park looking for an EV charger.

Clear signage and well-positioned charging bays can make a significant difference to the arrival experience.

Think about the journey from the entrance of your site to the charge point.

Is the charging area clearly signposted?

Can guests easily identify which bays are for EV charging?

Is there enough information at the charger to understand what to do next?

Good EV charging should remove friction from the arrival experience, not add another task before guests can check in.

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Charging: Keep the Experience Simple

Once guests reach the charger, the next step should be straightforward.

They want to plug in, start charging and get on with whatever brought them to your venue.

At Connekt sites, drivers can have access to different ways to start and pay for charging depending on the infrastructure, including the Get Connekted app, payment terminals and QR codes.

Offering different options matters because not every guest will be an experienced public charging user.

Someone who has driven an EV for years may already have their preferred apps and routines.

Another guest may have only recently switched to electric and charged almost exclusively at home.

The charging experience needs to work for both.

Your guest shouldn't need to understand EV charging infrastructure to use it.

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During Their Stay: Let Dwell Time Do the Work

Hospitality venues have a significant advantage when it comes to EV charging: guests are already spending time with you.

At a hotel, that could be overnight.

At a restaurant, perhaps a couple of hours.

At a spa, wedding venue, golf resort or visitor destination, it could be most of the day.

This dwell time should help shape the charging solution you provide.

There can be a temptation to assume faster charging automatically creates a better experience. But if a hotel guest's car will be parked for 12 hours, do they really need an ultra-rapid charger?

Often, the better solution is infrastructure designed around how long vehicles naturally remain onsite.

At Cameron House Hotel & Resort, for example, different charging requirements across the resort were matched with different solutions. Guests spending longer at the resort have different needs from valet operations requiring quicker vehicle turnaround or staff cars parked throughout a shift.

The objective isn't simply to charge every vehicle as quickly as possible.

It's to make charging fit naturally around the guest's visit.

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When Something Goes Wrong: Don't Send Guests to Reception

Even with a simple and reliable charging experience, there will occasionally be questions.

A guest might struggle to start a session. They may be unsure how to make a payment or disconnect their vehicle.

Without dedicated support, where do they go?

Usually, reception.

That means a member of your hospitality team can suddenly find themselves troubleshooting EV charging while simultaneously trying to check guests in, answer phones and provide the service they were actually employed to deliver.

With Connekt, drivers have access to support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Having a clear point of contact means the guest can speak to someone equipped to help them, while your team can continue looking after the rest of their stay.

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Behind the Scenes: Guests Shouldn't Need to Think About Reliability

There's another part of the guest journey they should ideally never see.

Everything happening behind the charger.

Network connectivity. Software. Monitoring. Alerts. Maintenance. Performance data.

For the guest, the expectation is much simpler:

They arrive and the charger works.

Once a Connekt site goes live, the charging infrastructure is monitored around the clock, with alerts configured for potential issues and performance data helping our Network team understand how chargers are operating.

That ongoing management is important because a charger advertised as a guest facility needs to be something guests can rely on.

The operational complexity should sit behind the scenes.

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Before Departure: Is the Guest Ready for Their Next Journey?

For a hotel guest, this is where EV charging can deliver one of its biggest benefits.

They arrived the previous evening, plugged in and enjoyed their stay.

The following morning, they check out and return to a vehicle with the energy they need for the next stage of their journey.

No detour to find a public charging station.

No additional stop shortly after leaving.

No waiting around before starting the day.

Charging has happened during time they were already spending at your hotel.

That's the convenience hospitality EV charging can provide when it's designed around the guest journey.

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After the Stay: The Charging Experience Still Reflects on Your Brand

Guests remember friction.

But they also remember when things are easy.

If someone chose your hotel partly because EV charging was available, found the chargers without difficulty, started their session easily and left the following morning ready to continue their journey, you've removed a potential source of travel stress.

That experience becomes part of their overall impression of the stay.

EV charging might not be the reason someone writes a five-star review.

But a poor charging experience can certainly become part of a negative one.

That's why charging shouldn't be considered separately from your wider approach to hospitality.

The driver is still your guest.

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Use Charging Data to Understand How the Guest Journey Is Changing

The guest journey won't remain static.

As EV adoption grows, more visitors may arrive expecting to charge.

Usage data can help hospitality venues understand how that demand is developing.

Connekt's Network team can analyse information including charging session times, energy consumption, payment methods and peak periods of demand. Host customers can also access charging information through their portal.

Over time, this can help answer useful questions.

Are the chargers busiest overnight? Are guests regularly using every available connector? Are certain periods becoming particularly busy? Is it time to consider adding more charging capacity?

Rather than waiting until guests begin struggling to find an available charger, businesses can use real-world usage to inform what comes next.

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EV Charging Should Feel Like Part of the Hospitality

A hospitality venue wouldn't design its reception without thinking about the guest.

It wouldn't choose a booking system without considering ease of use.

And it wouldn't plan parking without considering how visitors arrive and move around the site.

EV charging deserves the same thinking.

From the moment an EV driver searches for your venue to the moment they leave, there are opportunities to make charging easier:

Discover → Book → Arrive → Charge → Enjoy → Leave.

When each stage has been considered, EV charging stops feeling like a separate piece of infrastructure.

It simply becomes another part of the hospitality experience.

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Build EV Charging Around Your Guests

The right hospitality EV charging solution isn't necessarily the one with the most chargers or the highest power.

It's the one designed around your venue, your guests and how they actually spend their time with you.

Connekt can support your business from initial planning and installation through to charger management, network monitoring and 24/7, 365 driver support.

Want to make EV charging a seamless part of your guest journey? Book a call with Connekt today.

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