Destination Charging at Hotels

[PhilBa]

...I have asked my membership to pursue destination charging as a priority club objective by speaking with hotel management about the benefits whenever they have an opportunity. If member a has a serious lead I ask them to provide me with the contact information. ...

Excellent Larry! While there are arguments for 14-50 vs J1772 vs HPWC, they are second order issues. What you are doing, regardless of the actual plug, is exactly what every EV organization should be doing.

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Some good thoughts in this thread. Pulling from several recent post, I:
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Yup! Also, there are some examples of hotels with EVSEs of any sort having increased business.
- The Mazama Country Inn in Washington State has 3 chargers: 2 RV Plugs as 40A and one Sun Country J1772 at 70A. I know they get additional business because of them.
- The Holiday Inn Springfield-Eugene (Oregon) has noticed increased EV business from the supercharger in their parking lot.

I'm sure there are others as well. It would be good to pull that information together so that hotel owners/managers can see they aren't the first with the implication that if they don't do it, others will and perhaps take away these upscale customers.

 

[Eseell]

Larry, since you've had contact with hotels pre-installation, have you followed up with any of them post-install to see if they've noticed people using their charging stations? A few weeks or months post-install, I am curious if they are happy to have gone to the trouble.

 

[Larry Chanin]

Excellent Larry! While there are arguments for 14-50 vs J1772 vs HPWC, they are second order issues. What you are doing, regardless of the actual plug, is exactly what every EV organization should be doing.

Thanks Phil,

I know this issue can be controversial, and I will avoid being drawn into back and forth discussions on the subject. However, I would like to simply state that there is no question that the Tesla connector is superior to all other connectors in every way, both on performance, compactness and the ability to handle both Level 2 and 3 charging with the same compact connector. It is not a secret why Tesla relaxed its enforcement of its patents. I expect that when Tesla is building 100's of thousands of cars a year, year after year, this connector will become the de facto standard. For other EV manufacturers who later build cars capable of realistically taking road trips it would be silly not to partner with Tesla and adopt the Tesla connector as a standard, and pay the admission fee and join the Supercharger Network.

Therefore, it is important to me to look to the long term and promote the HPWC first to hotels. Then as a short term expedient to also suggest the addition of "universal" chargers to supplement the HPWCs.

Just my two cents.

Larry

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Larry, since you've had contact with hotels pre-installation, have you followed up with any of them post-install to see if they've noticed people using their charging stations? A few weeks or months post-install, I am curious if they are happy to have gone to the trouble.

Yes, after a hotel manager notified me that his chargers were operational, I sent out a mass mailing to our membership. The next day he cheerfully reported that he had more Models Ss lined up than he had charging terminals.

Larry

 

[TaosTho]

I have, I called several large hotel companies and they have passed on my thoughts to management. It's imposable to talk to management directly.
May be if all the Tesla owners that travel (and I assume that's all Tesla owners) made a similar effort they might get the message!

 

[Chickenlittle]

I have, I called several large hotel companies and they have passed on my thoughts to management. It's imposable to talk to management directly.
May be if all the Tesla owners that travel (and I assume that's all Tesla owners) made a similar effort they might get the message!

It may help if a list of all hotels with Chargers was on this site. Could include ratings. Even if not traveling with the car could still stay at hotel and tell them TMC referred you

 

[TexasEV]

It may help if a list of all hotels with Chargers was on this site. Could include ratings. Even if not traveling with the car could still stay at hotel and tell them TMC referred you

Plugshare lets you filter results to just hotels now.

 

[RiverBrick]

Plugshare lets you filter results to just hotels now.

I can only find this feature on the tesla.plugshare.com site. Not yet available on Android or at the regular web site.

 

[stevezzzz]

Recently I took advantage of the HPWC installed through Tesla's destination charging program in the garage at the Westin Riverfront Resort in Avon, Colorado. It's only available to hotel guests and only then if you valet your S. The output is limited to 16kW by the line voltage.

The first night we were able to top up during dinner (the hotel's only about 40 miles from the Silverthorne Supercharger and 52 miles from the Glenwood Supercharger). The second night a problem arose: they already had another S on charge and had no protocol in place for sharing the charger. Turns out this was the first time they'd ever seen two Model S at the same time and the only protocol in place was 'first come, first served'. The other S owner couldn't be reached and the valets were unwilling to unplug the car, or even to check if the charge session had completed. I asked to speak to the manager on duty and when she contacted me I spent some time with her to bring her up to speed on the charging needs of a Model S and to suggest how a single HPWC could be shared among multiple guests on any given night. It was a good discussion and she took notes to bring to the next management meeting.

Our last night at the hotel, we drove in from the south without enough charge to get to either Supercharger, so I was relieved to find the HPWC available and operational.

I applaud Tesla for launching their destination charging program, but they really need to work harder to educate the hotels they partner with in order to avoid this kind of preventable snafu. Especially when there's a valet service mediating access to the charger, it should be pretty easy to implement a sharing system. As I see it, all the valet has to do when a Tesla S arrives is to ask the owner some simple questions:

1. Do you need to charge your car?
2. How long do you need to spend on the charger?
3. When do you expect to retrieve your car?
4. Do we have your permission to unplug your car when charging is complete?

I would guess that any Model S owner who's willing to valet their car would also be willing to share the charger, so long as they get the charge they need.