BooksterEV Chargers for holiday rentals: What you need to know Links from the event evcafe.org Energy Saving Trust website Agenda How to attract new types of guests - Electric Vehicle (EV) drivers Marketing techniques Problems facing holiday rental owners Solutions Options Common Questions and Answers Script Kelly: Good morning to everybody who's here and warm welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today or if you're watching on the replay, thank you for coming along. My name's Kelly Odor and I'm the marketing director for Bookster. For those of you who are new to Bookster, I'll give you a very brief introduction. So Bookster is a property management software or property management system. We also create websites. We have a channel management arm in-house as well. And we're based here in Sunny Scotland and our head office is in Edinburgh. Originally when we started we were very Edinburgh centric, but that has spread out and we now have clients across the globe and we provide tools, techniques, and partnerships such as our partnership here with chrgr.io that are really very specifically designed to help holiday owners, holiday homeowners, holiday rental managers, to overcome those really quite time consuming tasks or quite complicated tasks of running a holiday rental business. So let's talk about today's session. So today is part of a series that we created following an observation really in the Facebook forums. Lots of conversations from property owners who are saying that they're not seeing the same level of occupancy or the same number of bookings compared to previous years. And conversely, some people are having a great year. So this is not standard. But in this series, what we're doing is covering how to manage or how to cope with those reductions in bookings by applying different techniques. So we've had Jenn Boyles who was here talking about how to use direct bookings. We've had Shivali from VRBO talking about trends and strategies of working with alternative channels. And this month we're looking at, and actually next month as well, we're looking at how to attract different types of guests to your holiday homes. And this month it's gonna be focusing on EV drivers. So I've invited Anna from charger.io who's going to cover some of the difficulties that we know of basing holiday rental owners, and we're gonna look at the different options available. Now, I wanted to cover EV guests for a couple of different reasons. I see a growing regularity of discussion on the forums around guests who are travelling and they're bringing their own cables and they are charging their electric vehicles from the holiday homes, indoor plugs. And obviously with that comes drama and conversation and discussion. And likewise, I can see there is an increase in demand for EV chargers and some of the marketing side of me is just screaming out how we can make and support holiday home owners and guests by providing EV chargers and really standing out from the competition. So for those of you who are interested in the data on holiday rental bookings, I covered it in the last two sessions, so I'm not gonna go over it again, but I will include that in my notes afterwards. But let's start with today. So we've got Anna and Arun here. So maybe, first of all, could you both take a few moments just to introduce yourselves and the work you do in charge.io? Anna: Yeah, so I'm Anna Robertson. I'm excited to be here. Thank you everyone. I am a business development lead for Vahanomy and I'm in charge of a product that's called charger.io. Before I worked in the cleantech business, I was a teacher and then I spent a bit of time raising my young children, and now I support Cleantech startups and we are based in Edinburgh as well. I'll pass over to Arun, who is the CEO. Arun: Uh, hi. This is Arun the co-founder of chrgr.io. Uh, so we, um, we, we have got a couple of products, Scoutia and Charger.io and both are kind of, um, geared to accelerate the rollout of the electric vehicle charging infrastructure. So we are looking forward to this webinar today to discuss how we can help you with rolling out EV infrastructure at your properties. Kelly: Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you both. So we're gonna start off today's session covering some techniques that you can use to attract guests with EV chargers. The points I'm gonna cover today briefly are photos, listings, social media, your email footer, and your social channels. Now, these are just five ways, but there are lots of different ways, but let's start with this today. Feel free to get in touch if you're looking for more information. So let me move my slides for a few moments. There we go. Photos for EV chargers So let's think about photos. So photos of your charger may not actually be the sexiest looking photo that you'll have in your holiday rental listing, but it is really important. Having at least one, preferably more photos will really demonstrate to your potential guests that you have. An EV charger doesn't have to be your first image clearly, but having it in there as part of your pack is important. And when you add in your photos, whether you add them directly into your property management software, like in Bookster or you add it directly onto your website or onto your channels, it is so important that you name these photos and you're using wording around electric vehicle charging, EVcharging that kind of vocabulary because this is data and that data feeds into the algorithms in the channels. It feeds into the algorithms on search engines like Bing and Google. And it helps your holiday home, whether it's on your website or through the channels, be more visible to people who are searching for a holiday home with EV chargers. I'll cover photos a little bit more in a second, but let me go on to the next bit, which is listings. Listings information for EV chargers So listings is your description that you have on your channels and really to appeal to those people who don't look at photos. And also to again, feed into the algorithms of the channels like booking.com for example, or to feed into Google, let's say, you need to use descriptive language within the descriptions of your listings. Now this will be visible on your website if you put it into your website information and also on the marketing channels that use your own wording. Now, obviously not all marketing channels use your wording. They choose, some of them choose to make their own wording up and that's fine 'cause that's what the photos are for. So you're covering all bases by having your descriptions and your photos is also worth remembering, in particular for the channels that now have Feature boxes that you can tick to say that you have an EV charger within the property. And again, either go into your property management software company to do that or if you don't have one, go directly into each and every marketing channel that you work with and find that box and tick it, 'cause that way any potential guest who is searching using the filters is gonna see you. They are going to see you and that helps you really stand out. And we know that they're using filters. When we spoke to um, Shivali at VRBO last month, she was talking about the different filters that clients or potential guests are using. So we know these are hotly of interest. So I did a search last night just 'cause I do, for a holiday home on Airbnb in Scotland for four people this weekend. Over a thousand places came up. I didn't see exactly how many, it just said more than a thousand. But when I clicked on the filter for EV charging, this came down to 68. That is much more appealing. If you are an EV guest, you can search for you know, using that filter. When I look for a property in Fife, I thought I'd narrow it down to a certain area for the same period. 168 properties. With an EV charger, 2. So if you imagine you're an EV driver, which property is gonna be most appealing, it's not gonna be the other 126 that don't have an EV charger you’re gonna be looking directly at those two. So that has created a significant unique selling point for you that's gonna drive traffic to your listing or to your website and create attention. Social media promotion of EV chargers Moving on to social media. Now social media's interesting because it's a vast topic to talk about. So I divided it into two sections for today. The first section is your own social media. Don't assume that any potential guest is taking the time to look at all your features or all your facilities on your website and within your social media. So you need to capture attention. And again, using those photographs that you've already taken from your listing and putting them onto your social media on a regular basis is essential. Now, I don't know how often you post on your social media, but let's say it's three times a week, which is kind of like the minimum recommendation. You could post something about your unique, amazing EV charger once every fortnight. So it's coming on once every fortnight, which is fairly regular. Now you don't have to use the same picture. And in fact I would firmly recommend that you have a, almost like a little mini catalogue of different shots of your EV charger. So if you get snow, a charger with snow on it, a charger next to the spring flowers that are bursting around the charger, with some flip flops leaning against them or some autumn leaves around them, fairy lights, a bit of tinsel, you know, you can really show, and depending on when you are looking to attract these guests to your holiday rental, you can make this a seasonal aspect of your social media campaign. And it doesn't have to be just a picture of the charger as it stands. It could be taken from far away if you have a driveway from far away down the drive with the focus being on your charger. Or it could be a closeup shot of the plugs or the cables or whatever kind of unit that you have set up. There's loads of options. I would recommend sitting on something like Instagram, Pinterest or doing just a search to see, well how are other people doing it? How could you do it better? That's really gonna capture attention. With your photograph you're going to need some kind of text. So thinking about why you chose to put one in, tell a story, talk about the benefits for your guests, talk about the importance of the environment for your business. This is your ethos. Talk about where other chargers are in your area because also if a guest is coming to you, maybe they want to charge while they're out and about. So this is lovely opportunity to actually talk about the other spots too. So there is a lot to say. You just have to say it and it's about sitting down for your social media and making these posts every, I would say every two weeks. Email footer with Electric Vehicle charging text Okay, the next section is on email footer. And this is such, it's such a simple action, but a lot of people don't do it. You only need to do it once and it will be seen by everybody that you send your emails to. So your email footer. So at that bit, at the bottom of your email can have your links to your website, your ethos, your USP, and now it could have wording about your EV charger. So let's say you have a beautiful property in Fife. It could be the name of your property, stylish holiday homes in rural fife. Now with EV charger and a little icon of an EV charger. It's super simple. You do it once, everybody that you email is going to see it. And that is part about clear communication, but without having to talk about it constantly in all your emails. Although emails is actually a good point 'cause there's obviously email marketing that is well worth thinking about there, but I'll come back to that in a different session. Social media pages for Electric Vehicles owners The next option or the final option is one of the other parts of social media. There is a world of forums out there. There are some specifically for EV drivers, some for visitors to your local area, others just talking about your local area. And again, I did a little quick search last night and I found in my first search a Facebook page called EV Friendly holidays and places to go in the uk. And on that page you could put that you have an EV charger, what your kind of property is, what an amazing destination you've got. And that's advertising to all these people who are very specifically looking for your kind of property with an EV charger. So it's a matter of getting out there, talking about your EV charger property, talking about your fantastic destination, sharing, replying to questions and and adding comments to other people's discussion. And if you're allowed to, you're not allowed to on all Facebook forums in some of them you can have a link to your website, which is a win. Now actually, Arun, we were talking earlier about marketing. Is there anything else that you would suggest from your side of knowledge? Arun: There are, there are a few, um, forums that are available. The most popular amongst them is EV cafe. So you can find it evcafe.org. Okay. I'll make a note that, and I'll send that out in the, the links afterwards. Evcafe.org. Yeah. Okay. And just to add to what you said, Kelly, to probably when you are putting pictures of your charger, also maybe have details if you have the technical information about the charger, the speed of the charger, what you know, how many kilowatts it is, what kind of, um, what kind of plug points you have on it. So, and, and if you have a cable or if it's a dedicated space, um, it's good to let people know about that and if it's also, if it's especially, or dedicated only for that property. Kelly: Perfect. That sounds brilliant. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna stop sharing my slides and I'm gonna pass it over to you, Anna. Anna: Great. Thank you so much. So this morning I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the benefits of offering a electric vehicle, which, we use at the EV to describe electric vehicle charging for your guests. We're gonna cover what the current problems are, offer some solutions, and look at your, what your options are. I'll be telling you briefly about the product that I think will specifically help, property managers. But this is just a suggestion. Um, and today is really just about learning what options there are out there for you to look into. If you do have questions, could I ask that you either put them in the chat as we go along or save them to the end? We've got a dedicated time for questions and answers at the end between myself and Arun, and we're happy to answer them. Okay. Electric vehicle ownership. As EVs become more popular, the demand for EV charging points at holiday homes is increasing quickly. As you know, many guests now travel to their chosen destination in their electric vehicle. So it is becoming more important that the property offers them the ability to charge their car range anxiety and charger availability. Range anxiety is where a tourist isn't sure how far they can travel on their EV because they need to know where their next Charge Point is going to be. And this is something to consider. EV charging problems facing holiday home owners. Lower bookings, these are a property may become unattractive to EV owners if EV charging is not available, which, um, Kelly has, has covered a little bit the loss of revenue through misuse of internal plug points. Has anybody had a guest who has taken the charger cable from inside through the window and out the car? Because it's certainly, um, something I've heard a few times, and again, Kelly did talk about it earlier. Unfair electricity bill increase, stop paying for your guest's EV fuel bill. Um, otherwise they're likely to charge the car very, very slowly via your, their three, your basic three pin plug charger. And the problem there is that your guests will be leaving you with a much larger electricity bill. And that's not a fair security risk so that you can charge your car. Guests may leave windows and doors propped open and that can pose a security risk to the property. Fire risk, the cabling and the connectors, they're not gonna be tested by you. Um, and the risk of electrical fire is higher inappropriate parking, um, to meet the cable length out of the window, out of the door, out of something else. Uh, guests may park on pavements or they may park on a front lawn or in a garden or somewhere inappropriate. And lastly, the last problem, trip hazard. Any cables are trail trailed across any foot traffic. We don't want that. Okay. EV Solutions for holiday home owners. So you can stand out, um, by installing. So if you install an EV charger or chargers, you can stand out in a track booking. In 2022 The UK market share of ownership of electric vehicles rose to almost 17%. And if anything, the rate that people are moving to electric vehicles or EVs is surpassing all previously held expectations. As more people are becoming aware of the benefits of electric cars. So with competition across the UK for holiday homes growing alongside the EV growth, the electric vehicle ownership growth, it really is a great idea to have an EV charger in your holiday home. It will certainly attract more bookings from people who own electric cars, but it also shows that you're environmentally friendly and that you're committed to helping reduce emissions. Support EV guests Needs Electric vehicle EV owners face unique needs when it comes to charging their cars when away from their homes. They don't know if chargers that are local to the holiday property if they're actually gonna work and they don't know how much they're going to charge your property can support these needs by and promote green transportation whilst potentially also making a small profit for you, which I'll come onto. Kelly: It's actually worth it, I spotted a message there from Bob Garner. He's saying that he got, well, he gets several bookings each year because he's got an EV charger. Like specifically people are seeking out his property because of that. So it really does help you attract new bookings. Anna: Yeah, good. Reduce fire risks, um, and security risks. So windows and doors, if you have a charger, will remain closed. They won't be propped open. Um, and the electrical equipment is, is tested 'cause it's your electrical equipment. Um, include information, um, in, in your listing of the amenities. So in here you can, you can explain that you have a charger and that, um, the guest is not required to bring their own charger, therefore reducing the, the option of them trailing a cable. An option to make money on every EV car fill up. So every time a guest uses a charger, you could make money for every kilowatt hour that they use. How much per kilowatt hour is down to your settings in an app, which is facilitated, facilitated by a third party. So this is having business work with you who specialise in apps for this specific situation. And this means that you not only cover your own electricity, but you're now turning a small profit on the electricity that they put in their EV car. Last point, not booked. No problem. Making money even when you don't have any guess is another bonus of having an EV charger. When the property is vacant, you can turn off holiday home mode and place the charger on a public EV charging network instead. So this now means that people can, if you so choose, reserve a time slot that you schedule and you have control over and then can arrive and charge their car. Now this is especially popular in rural areas where there are great fewer, um, a great deal, fewer fast superchargers, but even findings have shown that people prefer the less rapid chargers because they do less damage to the battery of an EV car. So fast chargers are good, but so are the slow chargers for this public network. The bonus here is that when your property is not filled with guests, it can become a parking spot that people flock to from miles around. And most importantly, they pay to be there. And even over a year, this can really become a small income depending on where you are and how much you charge for your electricity per hour. Um, because you can, you can control the extra costs in that way. Um, it's not beyond reason for the charger to pay for itself quicker than you may think. EV Options for holiday home owners. So your options are, you can do it yourself. Google search, um, ask around your friends, ask around other people who work in your industry, see what they've got. Uh, or you can list your charging needs on a charger. I've put up a QR code here. If you have your phone on, you now scan a QR code, it will take you directly to charger.io and you can sign up, it'll take you about seconds. I encourage you to do that. Now. Um, basically charger is, um, the product that I work with and think of match.com blended with Airbnb. Um, charger is an online marketplace which connects all the people and all the services needed to change a car parking space into an EV charge point. The charger IO platform gives direct access to all the industry experts. It allows options to be compared, it saves time. It's really a one-stop solution for rolling out EVcharging infrastructure for a property manager. Currently. You can sign up and make a simple profile which outlines your needs. Ev installers can then approach you on the marketplace and say, hi, I've seen your property, um, I can see your needs and, um, let's have a conversation. You can also approach, um, EV charger, EV charger installers and say, this is what I'm looking for. So it's, it's kind of a matching profile, a bit like a dating profile. Uh, if you do sign up to Charger io I'll get a notification and I will, I can, um, well, I will follow up with everybody who charge to, who signs up to date, personally, and, um, give you an email or a call and we can take this further and I can help you. So in summary, Four options. A - Do nothing, just continue as you are. B - You can install a home charger which you operate. And when I say you operate it, you are, if your guests want to charge and use your electricity, you will have to understand how to read the electricity bill, in enough time while your guests are there to then work out what you want to charge them. C - You can list on charger IO to install a charger and have a third party operate it for you. So this is a business that would help you set up a user interface and a small app. That means that you can work with the charger and work with guests so that you can have a kind of hands-off approach. D - You can also explore other options based on your location by listing on charger dial, like we talked about, with other, other people coming in, um, and potentially using your charger. Thank you so much for listening. Um, we welcome any questions and um, Kelly over to you. Fantastic. Kelly: Okay. I do actually have some questions already from Fred who emailed me this morning because he can't come. Um, so the first question he actually asked was about how to market the presence of EV charging, which I have covered to some degree, Fred, although you can't see the comments and Bob's put an extra comment on the side here suggesting to create an eco page on your website and make the EV charger a prominent part of your brand. So there's another great suggestion for you. Lemme just double check. Yep. That's all the comments about marketing. The next question was about funding opportunities. So we haven't really covered that and I guess cost is probably gonna be one of the big factors in a decision making process about adding something like this. Could you talk me through what funding is available? Arun: Sure. So there are different options that you can look at. One of the things that you can do on charger.io is you could list over there and say that you're looking for someone to invest in, in the charging infrastructure. So it can be an operator who would do that for you, install it, and then they would share revenue with you or they would just give you a fixed amount and then they would take the risk of operating it. But in terms of funding, you could also go to the Energy Saving Trust website. And uh, they have a few options for, for small businesses to, to fund part of their EVcharging infrastructure. It's not a hundred percent grant, but it's a part grant that's a good starting point. So it's an energy saving trust. Kelly: Brilliant. Okay. I'll make a note of that and I'll include that as well in the summary when I send out this video. Uh, the next question that Fred asked was how to effectively charge guests. If you have one charger, but maybe you have a number of different units, you said three or four units that you need to share that cost through, how would you coordinate that or arrange it? Arun: So is is it at one location or is it at uh, Kelly: Well he doesn't say that specifically, but I would imagine one location, three or four properties, but sharing the charger. Arun: Yeah. So, um, I think most guests would prefer a charger to be in the location that they're staying at. Mm-Hmm. Rather than unless they're walking distance from the other place. Mm-Hmm. You also have to make sure that, um, you, you have a booking system, to, to have the properties, um, you know, the guests, booked into a specific slot. So there are people not coming and waiting. When you have multiple property sharing locations, it's ideal to have charges at each location rather than for it to be shared across locations. But in the case of, one location having, you know, multiple, parking lots and you have only one charger, you can, you can make sure that you've got slots allocated to each one of them And that would be done using a third party who has an app Yeah. Where you would manage that easily on, on the app that they provide for that situation. Kelly: Okay. So that tells me about how to book it, which is great 'cause I actually hadn't even thought about that option. But then when they wanted to charge the guest, how would that charging process work? Arun: So there would be software depending upon the type of charger you get in. So if it's a very basic home charger, you would then have to make a guess based on the metre reading to say that you've used up so many, um, kilowatts and then charge based on that. But the ideal way to do it is to have software with a high, a higher type of charger, which is, which is, which interacts with the software. So you can, it'll tell you exactly how much has been taken, used up and then you charge based on that. So you can say based on your, you can do a fixed cost and say so many pens per kilowatt or you can, you can have, if you've got, sub your supplier giving you at different rates at night and day, you can also offer that so that someone can charge during the day for a different price at night. You can charge at a different premium price if you want, so that your charger is utilised through the day and night. Kelly: That's really interesting. So actually it is really down to the software that you're using and the setup that you've got that's gonna help you organise your bookings, organise your charging, organise your costs. Yeah. Okay. That's amazing. Right. They were the questions from Fred, let me just whiz through the questions. I don't, can you see the questions on the right hand side or will I read them out? I'll read them out to you anyway. Um, so Paul wasn't a question, but it was more of a comment. He said one of the issues is that EV guests feel that they're getting ripped off by paying 30 to 40 pounds to charge their vehicles when it costs them 15 pounds at home. Is there anything that you have to say? Arun: Well, um, it's the convenience that you're offering. I mean, in some ways it's up to them, it's up to the property owner how much they want to charge. And that would depend upon the cost of what kind of infrastructure. Because if you're doing something at home, it's not necessarily a fast charge. And if you're, if you've got a, a faster charger at your, at this property, you can charge a little bit higher. But then how much you charge is entirely dependent on you. It's like someone that's saying at a cafe that, you know, a cup of coffee costs me 50p to make it home and it's two pounds or three pounds or whatever it is. So I mean, it is a convenience that you're offering as well because otherwise what would they do? They would've to go somewhere else and wait somewhere and then spend that money at that place while they were waiting. So it's you, they're, they're paying for the convenience and also you have to take into consideration that you have the capital cost of setting up the charging infrastructure, which you've done only for them. Mm-hmm. So yeah, but you have to take, I guess you have to take a common sense approach to it. And then it's also dependent on location. So if yours is a great location and there's nothing available anywhere, you could probably charge a little bit more More. Kelly: Okay. That's really interesting. Lovely. Let me go down to, oh, it's another question from Paul. Is charger.io similar to Vault share? Arun: No, we are, we are a marketplace. So what we do is we, we are a platform where, where where you can meet, um, charging point operators who can install and operate the charging point for you. So you can list your property and say this parking lot or even if you have a green field or a Brown field site as well, you can list it and say, I want to make this available for EV charging infrastructure. And then you can also make your same property available to a fleet operator for times when your infrastructure's not being used. So it can be during off season, it can be during the day when not a lot of guests are there during, at the property itself. Uh, and you can also connect with infrastructure investors, people who might fund the setting up the infrastructure EV charge charger. And you can also meet product manufacturers and, and the specialists. So any service provider you might need planning permission, you might need, you know, electrical contractors, civil contractors specific to EV charging. And all the experts will be available over there under the three different categories that we have. So it's charging point operators, property owners, and also product vendors and service providers. So it's, it's, it's like a dating site we match here with, with them. Kelly: I love that. What a great description. Okay. Uh, Bob has asked one final question. He says, I'm in Italy and my Tesla stroke general charger just died. Do you connect people in Europe with suppliers? Arun: Not at the moment. Right now we are just doing the UK before we launch, globally. Kelly: Excellent. Okay, Bob, sorry to hear that. It just died. That's a pain. Okay, then that's all the questions that we've got. Um, I was wondering if there is just one thing, one aspect that you want us to take away from today's session, what would it be? Arun: So for what the reason we have the platform is, is, is so that property owners often get approached by different charging point operators and product vendors and things like that. And what we are saying is take time to consider what you have because sometimes you might have a great location, it may not, there, there'll be great location, not, not in terms of it being a property, a holiday home, but may be a great location for a charging point because there may be nothing in that area for miles and that might add additional value to your property. So if you are, making your, your parking space or your land or additional prop uh, commercial property available, then it is good to see all the options that you have because there are options like you can invest and operate it yourself. You can share it, you can share the risk with an operator or you can get a fixed rent from the operator and let them just take care of the rest of it. And then you can get custom, um, custom deals. So things to look at how long, what kind of duration someone's offering because someone might come and say, I only make money on this if it's a year, lease. Whereas someone else might come and say, we can do it for seven years and operate it for seven years. So you get, consider all your options before you sign up. Kelly: Yeah, Okay. Yeah, it's actually really interesting 'cause you're talking there not only about it being on like a parking spot outside the property, but you know other areas of your land as well. So if you are a farmer or you have, you know, more extensive land, there are lots of opportunities there too. Um, I know when I was talking with Anna earlier and we were talking about funding and one point that Anna made that was really interesting, we were trying to think like, why would somebody not have an EV charger? One of the big aspects is the cost. And my question was how much does it actually cost to put an EV charger in? And actually maybe it would be really useful if you could answer that question now. Arun: So the cost really varies. I mean it could vary from, from a thousand pounds onwards till, till till a hundred thousand. It depends upon the speed of the charger. So you have to make sure that that then matches the needs of your property, how much traffic is there, and, and if the, you have a property that has got land attached to it and then you've got, you public can also access it, it could become a share, not just for your guests, but you can also make it available to public or you could make it available to, to fleet operators. If you don't want any outsider to come in, you can have fleet operators in your area access it. So depending on that, you would then want to have a, a rapid ultra fast charger or a, or a, you know, a fast charger or, or just a slow charger. So the price really varies. It's, it's, it's, it's quite a lot. Anna: Uh, Yeah, it's, it's case by case really depending on, you don't really know the price until someone comes and looks at your land and gives you a quote, um, you know, costs of potentially, um, you know, laying electricity lines further so that the charger can go to a different area. Those sort of costs you have to consider as well. Or some people just get a charger installed right next to their garage wall where there's already an electricity supply so that there's, there's no sort of, um, unaccounted for cost that way. So yeah, it really is case by case. There's no set cost, um, for, for it. Kelly: Do you mind if I ask, sorry, Arun, you mentioned language there that I don't know about. You mentioned fleet. Arun: Yeah, so fleet is any, um, it could be, someone who's doing deliveries or you could have, a small business in your area, which has got vans so they, which that they use in their business and they, they may not have space to charge their, you know, the electric vans that they will need to buy and they could then use your infrastructure, which would save them the capital cost, but give you assured income from them. So they come and park for a certain number of hours. Uh, it could, could be, it could be different trades people, it could be the, Anna: The post office is a fleet, the post office is the biggest fleet they've got. They've got electric vehicles. Yeah. But it can be any small business or it can be even local trans, rural transport, organisations. Uh, it could be coaches that are coming through depending upon the size of your property and access to that thing as well, to the, to the, to your location. Kelly: So that's really interesting. So that's, that's actually opening up. You're not just thinking about guests that can travel to your area who are interested in EV charging, but really thinking about the wider community of people who are also growing in their use of EV vehicles and therefore need a charging solution. So there's, yeah, that's actually slightly mind blowing, really what opportunities there are out there if you were interested. Arun: And if you've got cafes, Kelly, if you've got a cafe in your, in your property or something or close, it's something that during the day you'll have a lot of footfall or a store people might come, you know, if you're doing a you know, you're selling something, people may come and charge there for half an hour just just so that they could get that charge. And then you might want to put a real ultra fast charger because in 30 minutes it could get up to 80% sometimes of charge. And so it drives traffic to your place, to your destination or your property as well. Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. Okay. I'm very conscious it is 45 minutes and I always like to finish on time. So, I'd like to just say thank you so much for coming along. I have definitely learned more about electric vehicles in the last couple of weeks talking to you both. Um, so I appreciate it and thank you to everybody who's come along today or if you're watching on replay, I'll send out the video. I'll send all the links that Anna and Arun have talked about today as well. If you have any questions, you can see Anna's got her details there. You're more than welcome to get in touch with her. As always, you're more than welcome to get in touch with me as well. And you know, I think I've mentioned it a few different times, but we have our Wednesday drop in session now. Anna came to one of them a couple of weeks ago. You're more than welcome to come to our drop in sessions any Wednesday from half past to half past one. And I'll include the links there too and you can ask us any questions. Okay, thank you very much. Thanks very much and uh, I'll see you again soon.
x

Made for Holiday Rental Managers like you.

Webinar EV Charger solutions for holiday rentals

Kelly Odor
45 minute watch

Key Takeaways

  • Watch the replay :)
  • Anna Robertson from CHRGR.io was live with Bookster.
  • Electric vehicle users are growing - providing lots of opportunities.
  • Charging options: include estimations, fixed prices, or actual costs + a profit.
  • Attract guests with photos, social media, updating your listings, email footers.
  • Options: Do nothing, a home charger, use a 3rd party to install / operate.

Webinar - EV Charger options for holiday rentals

Graphic of Bookster property management interfaces

Bookster is designed to help holiday rental managers.

Get started free…Book a Demo

Would you like to be attractive to a new market? Are you interested in EV Chargers for your holiday rental? Do your guests ask you if you have chargers? Anna Robertson of CHRGR.io chats with Bookster about the latest solutions for holiday rental owners wanting an EV charger solution.


CHRGR Replay - EV Charger Solutions for holiday rentals 2024 - Text "Attracting EV Guests - Charger solutions for holiday rentals' with a logo of Bookster and CHRGR.io and 'Watch the replay.'

In this event we covered how to attract a new type of guest to your holiday home - the environmentally conscious and Electric Vehicle drivers. 

EV Chargers for holiday rentals: 
What you need to know

Links from the event

Agenda

  • How to attract new types of guests - Electric Vehicle (EV) drivers
  • Marketing techniques 
  • Problems facing holiday rental owners
  • Solutions
  • Options
  • Common Questions and Answers

Script 

Kelly: 

Good morning to everybody who's here and warm welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today or if you're watching on the replay, thank you for coming along. 

My name's Kelly Odor and I'm the marketing director for Bookster. 

For those of you who are new to Bookster, I'll give you a very brief introduction. So Bookster is a property management software or property management system. We also create websites. We have a channel management arm in-house as well. 

And we're based here in Sunny Scotland and our head office is in Edinburgh.

Originally when we started we were very Edinburgh centric, but that has spread out and we now have clients across the globe and we provide tools, techniques, and partnerships such as our partnership here with chrgr.io that are really very specifically designed to help holiday owners, holiday homeowners, holiday rental managers, to overcome those really quite time consuming tasks or quite complicated tasks of running a holiday rental business. 

So let's talk about today's session. 

So today is part of a series that we created following an observation really in the Facebook forums. 

Lots of conversations from property owners who are saying that they're not seeing the same level of occupancy or the same number of bookings compared to previous years. And conversely, some people are having a great year. So this is not standard. 

But in this series, what we're doing is covering how to manage or how to cope with those reductions in bookings by applying different techniques. 

So we've had Jenn Boyles who was here talking about how to use direct bookings. We've had Shivali from VRBO talking about trends and strategies of working with alternative channels. 

And this month we're looking at, and actually next month as well, we're looking at how to attract different types of guests to your holiday homes. And this month it's gonna be focusing on EV drivers.  

So I've invited Anna from charger.io who's going to cover some of the difficulties that we know of basing holiday rental owners, and we're gonna look at the different options available. 

Now, I wanted to cover EV guests for a couple of different reasons. I see a growing regularity of discussion on the forums around guests who are travelling and they're bringing their own cables and they are charging their electric vehicles from the holiday homes, indoor plugs. And obviously with that comes drama and conversation and discussion. 

And likewise, I can see there is an increase in demand for EV chargers and some of the marketing side of me is just screaming out how we can make and support holiday home owners and guests by providing EV chargers and really standing out from the competition. 

So for those of you who are interested in the data on holiday rental bookings, I covered it in the last two sessions, so I'm not gonna go over it again, but I will include that in my notes afterwards.

But let's start with today.  

So we've got Anna and Arun here. So maybe, first of all, could you both take a few moments just to introduce yourselves and the work you do in charge.io? 

Anna: 

Yeah, so I'm Anna Robertson. I'm excited to be here. Thank you everyone. I am a business development lead for Vahanomy and I'm in charge of a product that's called charger.io. Before I worked in the cleantech business, I was a teacher and then I spent a bit of time raising my young children, and now I support Cleantech startups and we are based in Edinburgh as well. I'll pass over to Arun, who is the CEO. 

Arun: 

Uh, hi. This is Arun the co-founder of chrgr.io. Uh, so we, um, we, we have got a couple of products, Scoutia and Charger.io and both are kind of, um, geared to accelerate the rollout of the electric vehicle charging infrastructure. So we are looking forward to this webinar today to discuss how we can help you with rolling out EV infrastructure at your properties. 

Kelly:

Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you both. So we're gonna start off today's session covering some techniques that you can use to attract guests with EV chargers. The points I'm gonna cover today briefly are photos, listings, social media, your email footer, and your social channels. Now, these are just five ways, but there are lots of different ways, but let's start with this today. 

Feel free to get in touch if you're looking for more information. So let me move my slides for a few moments. There we go. 

Photos for EV chargers

So let's think about photos. So photos of your charger may not actually be the sexiest looking photo that you'll have in your holiday rental listing, but it is really important. Having at least one, preferably more photos will really demonstrate to your potential guests that you have. An EV charger doesn't have to be your first image clearly, but having it in there as part of your pack is important. 

And when you add in your photos, whether you add them directly into your property management software, like in Bookster or you add it directly onto your website or onto your channels, it is so important that you name these photos and you're using wording around electric vehicle charging, EVcharging that kind of vocabulary because this is data and that data feeds into the algorithms in the channels.

It feeds into the algorithms on search engines like Bing and Google. And it helps your holiday home, whether it's on your website or through the channels, be more visible to people who are searching for a holiday home with EV chargers. 

I'll cover photos a little bit more in a second, but let me go on to the next bit, which is listings.

Listings information for EV chargers

So listings is your description that you have on your channels and really to appeal to those people who don't look at photos. 

And also to again, feed into the algorithms of the channels like booking.com for example, or to feed into Google, let's say, you need to use descriptive language within the descriptions of your listings. 

Now this will be visible on your website if you put it into your website information and also on the marketing channels that use your own wording. Now, obviously not all marketing channels use your wording. 

They choose, some of them choose to make their own wording up and that's fine 'cause that's what the photos are for. 

So you're covering all bases by having your descriptions and your photos is also worth remembering, in particular for the channels that now have Feature boxes that you can tick to say that you have an EV charger within the property. 

And again, either go into your property management software company to do that or if you don't have one, go directly into each and every marketing channel that you work with and find that box and tick it, 'cause that way any potential guest who is searching using the filters is gonna see you. They are going to see you and that helps you really stand out. 

And we know that they're using filters. When we spoke to um, Shivali at VRBO last month, she was talking about the different filters that clients or potential guests are using. So we know these are hotly of interest. 

So I did a search last night just 'cause I do, for a holiday home on Airbnb in Scotland for four people this weekend. Over a thousand places came up. I didn't see exactly how many, it just said more than a thousand. 

But when I clicked on the filter for EV charging, this came down to 68. 

That is much more appealing. If you are an EV guest, you can search for you know, using that filter. When I look for a property in Fife, I thought I'd narrow it down to a certain area for the same period. 168 properties. With an EV charger, 2. 

So if you imagine you're an EV driver, which property is gonna be most appealing, it's not gonna be the other 126 that don't have an EV charger you’re gonna be looking directly at those two.

So that has created a significant unique selling point for you that's gonna drive traffic to your listing or to your website and create attention. 

Social media promotion of EV chargers

Moving on to social media. Now social media's interesting because it's a vast topic to talk about.

So I divided it into two sections for today. 

The first section is your own social media.

Don't assume that any potential guest is taking the time to look at all your features or all your facilities on your website and within your social media. 

So you need to capture attention. And again, using those photographs that you've already taken from your listing and putting them onto your social media on a regular basis is essential. 

Now, I don't know how often you post on your social media, but let's say it's three times a week, which is kind of like the minimum recommendation. 

You could post something about your unique, amazing EV charger once every fortnight. So it's coming on once every fortnight, which is fairly regular.

Now you don't have to use the same picture. And in fact I would firmly recommend that you have a, almost like a little mini catalogue of different shots of your EV charger. 

So if you get snow, a charger with snow on it, a charger next to the spring flowers that are bursting around the charger, with some flip flops leaning against them or some autumn leaves around them, fairy lights, a bit of tinsel, you know, you can really show, and depending on when you are looking to attract these guests to your holiday rental, you can make this a seasonal aspect of your social media campaign. 

And it doesn't have to be just a picture of the charger as it stands.

It could be taken from far away if you have a driveway from far away down the drive with the focus being on your charger.

Or it could be a closeup shot of the plugs or the cables or whatever kind of unit that you have set up. 

There's loads of options. I would recommend sitting on something like Instagram, Pinterest or doing just a search to see, well how are other people doing it? How could you do it better? That's really gonna capture attention. With your photograph you're going to need some kind of text. 

So thinking about why you chose to put one in, tell a story, talk about the benefits for your guests, talk about the importance of the environment for your business. This is your ethos.

Talk about where other chargers are in your area because also if a guest is coming to you, maybe they want to charge while they're out and about. 

So this is lovely opportunity to actually talk about the other spots too. So there is a lot to say. You just have to say it and it's about sitting down for your social media and making these posts every, I would say every two weeks. 

Email footer with Electric Vehicle charging text

Okay, the next section is on email footer.

And this is such, it's such a simple action, but a lot of people don't do it. You only need to do it once and it will be seen by everybody that you send your emails to. 

So your email footer. So at that bit, at the bottom of your email can have your links to your website, your ethos, your USP, and now it could have wording about your EV charger. So let's say you have a beautiful property in Fife. It could be the name of your property, stylish holiday homes in rural fife. 

Now with EV charger and a little icon of an EV charger. It's super simple. You do it once, everybody that you email is going to see it. And that is part about clear communication, but without having to talk about it constantly in all your emails. 

Although emails is actually a good point 'cause there's obviously email marketing that is well worth thinking about there, but I'll come back to that in a different session. 

Social media pages for Electric Vehicles owners

The next option or the final option is one of the other parts of social media. 

There is a world of forums out there. There are some specifically for EV drivers, some for visitors to your local area, others just talking about your local area.

And again, I did a little quick search last night and I found in my first search a Facebook page called EV Friendly holidays and places to go in the uk. 

And on that page you could put that you have an EV charger, what your kind of property is, what an amazing destination you've got. 

And that's advertising to all these people who are very specifically looking for your kind of property with an EV charger.

So it's a matter of getting out there, talking about your EV charger property, talking about your fantastic destination, sharing, replying to questions and and adding comments to other people's discussion. 

And if you're allowed to, you're not allowed to on all Facebook forums in some of them you can have a link to your website, which is a win.

Now actually, Arun, we were talking earlier about marketing. Is there anything else that you would suggest from your side of knowledge? 

Arun: 

There are, there are a few, um, forums that are available. 

The most popular amongst them is EV cafe. So you can find it evcafe.org. Okay. I'll make a note that, and I'll send that out in the, the links afterwards. Evcafe.org. Yeah. Okay. 

And just to add to what you said, Kelly, to probably when you are putting pictures of your charger, also maybe have details if you have the technical information about the charger, the speed of the charger, what you know, how many kilowatts it is, what kind of, um, what kind of plug points you have on it.

So, and, and if you have a cable or if it's a dedicated space, um, it's good to let people know about that and if it's also, if it's especially, or dedicated only for that property. 

Kelly: 

Perfect. That sounds brilliant. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna stop sharing my slides and I'm gonna pass it over to you, Anna. 

Anna: 

Great. Thank you so much. So this morning I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the benefits of offering a electric vehicle, which, we use at the EV to describe electric vehicle charging for your guests.

We're gonna cover what the current problems are, offer some solutions, and look at your, what your options are. I'll be telling you briefly about the product that I think will specifically help, property managers. But this is just a suggestion. 

Um, and today is really just about learning what options there are out there for you to look into. If you do have questions, could I ask that you either put them in the chat as we go along or save them to the end? We've got a dedicated time for questions and answers at the end between myself and Arun, and we're happy to answer them. Okay.

Electric vehicle ownership.

As EVs become more popular, the demand for EV charging points at holiday homes is increasing quickly. 

As you know, many guests now travel to their chosen destination in their electric vehicle. So it is becoming more important that the property offers them the ability to charge their car range anxiety and charger availability.

Range anxiety is where a tourist isn't sure how far they can travel on their EV because they need to know where their next Charge Point is going to be. And this is something to consider. 

EV charging problems facing holiday home owners. 

Lower bookings, these are a property may become unattractive to EV owners if EV charging is not available, which, um, Kelly has, has covered a little bit the loss of revenue through misuse of internal plug points.

Has anybody had a guest who has taken the charger cable from inside through the window and out the car? Because it's certainly, um, something I've heard a few times, and again, Kelly did talk about it earlier. 

Unfair electricity bill increase, stop paying for your guest's EV fuel bill. Um, otherwise they're  likely to charge the car very, very slowly via your, their three, your basic three pin plug charger. And the problem there is that your guests will be leaving you with a much larger electricity bill. 

And that's not a fair security risk so that you can charge your car. Guests may leave windows and doors propped open and that can pose a security risk to the property. Fire risk, the cabling and the connectors, they're not gonna be tested by you. 

Um, and the risk of electrical fire is higher inappropriate parking, um, to meet the cable length out of the window, out of the door, out of something else. 

Uh, guests may park on pavements or they may park on a front lawn or in a garden or somewhere inappropriate. 

And lastly, the last problem, trip hazard. Any cables are trail trailed across any foot traffic. We don't want that. Okay. 

EV Solutions for holiday home owners. 

So you can stand out, um, by installing. So if you install an EV charger or chargers, you can stand out in a track booking. 

In 2022 The UK market share of ownership of electric vehicles rose to almost 17%. 

And if anything, the rate that people are moving to electric vehicles or EVs is surpassing all previously held expectations. As more people are becoming aware of the benefits of electric cars. 

So with competition across the UK for holiday homes growing alongside the EV growth, the electric vehicle ownership growth, it really is a great idea to have an EV charger in your holiday home. 

It will certainly attract more bookings from people who own electric cars, but it also shows that you're environmentally friendly and that you're committed to helping reduce emissions. 

Support EV guests Needs 

Electric vehicle EV owners face unique needs when it comes to charging their cars when away from their homes. 

They don't know if chargers that are local to the holiday property if they're actually gonna work and they don't know how much they're going to charge your property can support these needs by and promote green transportation whilst potentially also making a small profit for you, which I'll come onto. 

Kelly: 

It's actually worth it, I spotted a message there from Bob Garner. He's saying that he got, well, he gets several bookings each year because he's got an EV charger. 

Like specifically people are seeking out his property because of that. So it really does help you attract new bookings. 

Anna: 

Yeah, good. Reduce fire risks, um, and security risks. So windows and doors, if you have a charger, will remain closed. They won't be propped open. Um, and the electrical equipment is, is tested 'cause it's your electrical equipment. Um, include information, um, in, in your listing of the amenities. 

So in here you can, you can explain that you have a charger and that, um, the guest is not required to bring their own charger, therefore reducing the, the option of them trailing a cable. 

An option to make money on every EV car fill up. So every time a guest uses a charger, you could make money for every kilowatt hour that they use. How much per kilowatt hour is down to your settings in an app, which is facilitated, facilitated by a third party. So this is having business work with you who specialise in apps for this specific situation. 

And this means that you not only cover your own electricity, but you're now turning a small profit on the electricity that they put in their EV car. Last point, not booked. No problem. Making money even when you don't have any guess is another bonus of having an EV charger. When the property is vacant, you can turn off holiday home mode and place the charger on a public EV charging network instead. 

So this now means that people can, if you so choose, reserve a time slot that you schedule and you have control over and then can arrive and charge their car. 

Now this is especially popular in rural areas where there are great fewer, um, a great deal, fewer fast superchargers, but even findings have shown that people prefer the less rapid chargers because they do less damage to the battery of an EV car. 

So fast chargers are good, but so are the slow chargers for this public network. The bonus here is that when your property is not filled with guests, it can become a parking spot that people flock to from miles around. And most importantly, they pay to be there. 

And even over a year, this can really become a small income depending on where you are and how much you charge for your electricity per hour. Um, because you can, you can control the extra costs in that way. Um, it's not beyond reason for the charger to pay for itself quicker than you may think. 

EV Options for holiday home owners.

So your options are, you can do it yourself. Google search, um, ask around your friends, ask around other people who work in your industry, see what they've got. Uh, or you can list your charging needs on a charger. I've put up a QR code here. 

If you have your phone on, you now scan a QR code, it will take you directly to charger.io and you can sign up, it'll take you about  seconds. I encourage you to do that. 

Now. Um, basically charger is, um, the product that I work with and think of match.com blended with Airbnb. Um, charger is an online marketplace which connects all the people and all the services needed to change a car parking space into an EV charge point. 

The charger IO platform gives direct access to all the industry experts. It allows options to be compared, it saves time. It's really a one-stop solution for rolling out EVcharging infrastructure for a property manager. Currently. You can sign up and make a simple profile which outlines your needs.

Ev installers can then approach you on the marketplace and say, hi, I've seen your property, um, I can see your needs and, um, let's have a conversation. You can also approach, um, EV charger, EV charger installers and say, this is what I'm looking for. 

So it's, it's kind of a matching profile, a bit like a dating profile. Uh, if you do sign up to Charger io I'll get a notification and I will, I can, um, well, I will follow up with everybody who charge to, who signs up to date, personally, and, um, give you an email or a call and we can take this further and I can help you. 

So in summary, Four options. 

A - Do nothing, just continue as you are. 

B - You can install a home charger which you operate. 

And when I say you operate it, you are, if your guests want to charge and use your electricity, you will have to understand how to read the electricity bill, in enough time while your guests are there to then work out what you want to charge them. 

C - You can list on charger IO to install a charger and have a third party operate it for you. So this is a business that would help you set up a user interface and a small app. 

That means that you can work with the charger and work with guests so that you can have a kind of hands-off approach. 

D - You can also explore other options based on your location by listing on charger dial, like we talked about, with other, other people coming in, um, and potentially using your charger. 

Thank you so much for listening. Um, we welcome any questions and um, Kelly over to you. Fantastic.

Kelly:

Okay. I do actually have some questions already from Fred who emailed me this morning because he can't come. 

Um, so the first question he actually asked was about how to market the presence of EV charging, which I have covered to some degree, Fred, although you can't see the comments and Bob's put an extra comment on the side here suggesting to create an eco page on your website and make the EV charger a prominent part of your brand. So there's another great suggestion for you. 

Lemme just double check. Yep. That's all the comments about marketing. 

The next question was about funding opportunities. So we haven't really covered that and I guess cost is probably gonna be one of the big factors in a decision making process about adding something like this. 

Could you talk me through what funding is available? 

Arun: 

Sure. So there are different options that you can look at. One of the things that you can do on charger.io is you could list over there and say that you're looking for someone to invest in, in the charging infrastructure. 

So it can be an operator who would do that for you, install it, and then they would share revenue with you or they would just give you a fixed amount and then they would take the risk of operating it. 

But in terms of funding, you could also go to the Energy Saving Trust website. And uh, they have a few options for, for small businesses to, to fund part of their EVcharging infrastructure. 

It's not a hundred percent grant, but it's a part grant that's a good starting point. So it's an energy saving trust. 

Kelly: 

Brilliant. Okay. I'll make a note of that and I'll include that as well in the summary when I send out this video. Uh, the next question that Fred asked was how to effectively charge guests. If you have one charger, but maybe you have a number of different units, you said three or four units that you need to share that cost through, how would you coordinate that or arrange it? 

Arun: 

So is is it at one location or is it at uh, 

Kelly: 

Well he doesn't say that specifically, but I would imagine one location, three or four properties, but sharing the charger. 

Arun: 

Yeah. So, um, I think most guests would prefer a charger to be in the location that they're staying at. Mm-Hmm. 

Rather than unless they're walking distance from the other place. Mm-Hmm. You also have to make sure that, um, you, you have a booking system, to, to have the properties, um, you know, the guests, booked into a specific slot. 

So there are people not coming and waiting. When you have multiple property sharing locations, it's ideal to have charges at each location rather than for it to be shared across locations. 

But in the case of, one location having, you know, multiple, parking lots and you have only one charger, you can, you can make sure that you've got slots allocated to each one of them And that would be done using a third party who has an app Yeah. Where you would manage that easily on, on the app that they provide for that situation. 

Kelly: 

Okay. So that tells me about how to book it, which is great 'cause I actually hadn't even thought about that option.

But then when they wanted to charge the guest, how would that charging process work? 

Arun: 

So there would be software depending upon the type of charger you get in. So if it's a very basic home charger, you would then have to make a guess based on the metre reading to say that you've used up so many, um, kilowatts and then charge based on that. But the ideal way to do it is to have software with a high, a higher type of charger, which is, which is, which interacts with the software. 

So you can, it'll tell you exactly how much has been taken, used up and then you charge based on that. So you can say based on your, you can do a fixed cost and say so many pens per kilowatt or you can, you can have, if you've got, sub your supplier giving you at different rates at night and day, you can also offer that so that someone can charge during the day for a different price at night. 

You can charge at a different premium price if you want, so that your charger is utilised through the day and night. 

Kelly: 

That's really interesting. So actually it is really down to the software that you're using and the setup that you've got that's gonna help you organise your bookings, organise your charging, organise your costs. Yeah. Okay. That's amazing. Right. They were the questions from Fred, let me just whiz through the questions. 

I don't, can you see the questions on the right hand side or will I read them out? I'll read them out to you anyway. 

Um, so Paul wasn't a question, but it was more of a comment. He said one of the issues is that EV guests feel that they're getting ripped off by paying 30 to 40 pounds to charge their vehicles when it costs them 15 pounds at home. Is there anything that you have to say? 

Arun: 

Well, um, it's the convenience that you're offering. I mean, in some ways it's up to them, it's up to the property owner how much they want to charge. 

And that would depend upon the cost of what kind of infrastructure. Because if you're doing something at home, it's not necessarily a fast charge. And if you're, if you've got a, a faster charger at your, at this property, you can charge a little bit higher. But then how much you charge is entirely dependent on you. 

It's like someone that's saying at a cafe that, you know, a cup of coffee costs me 50p to make it home and it's two pounds or three pounds or whatever it is. So I mean, it is a convenience that you're offering as well because otherwise what would they do? 

They would've to go somewhere else and wait somewhere and then spend that money at that place while they were waiting. 

So it's you, they're, they're paying for the convenience and also you have to take into consideration that you have the capital cost of setting up the charging infrastructure, which you've done only for them. Mm-hmm. 

So yeah, but you have to take, I guess you have to take a common sense approach to it. And then it's also dependent on location. So if yours is a great location and there's nothing available anywhere, you could probably charge a little bit more More. 

Kelly: 

Okay. That's really interesting. Lovely. Let me go down to, oh, it's another question from Paul. Is charger.io similar to Vault share? 

Arun: 

No, we are, we are a marketplace. So what we do is we, we are a platform where, where where you can meet, um, charging point operators who can install and operate the charging point for you. 

So you can list your property and say this parking lot or even if you have a green field or a Brown field site as well, you can list it and say, I want to make this available for EV charging infrastructure. 

And then you can also make your same property available to a fleet operator for times when your infrastructure's not being used. 

So it can be during off season, it can be during the day when not a lot of guests are there during, at the property itself. Uh, and you can also connect with infrastructure investors, people who might fund the setting up the infrastructure EV charge charger. And you can also meet product manufacturers and, and the specialists. 

So any service provider you might need planning permission, you might need, you know, electrical contractors, civil contractors specific to EV charging. 

And all the experts will be available over there under the three different categories that we have. So it's charging point operators, property owners, and also product vendors and service providers. So it's, it's, it's like a dating site we match here with, with them. 

Kelly: 

I love that. What a great description. Okay. Uh, Bob has asked one final question. He says, I'm in Italy and my Tesla stroke general charger just died. Do you connect people in Europe with suppliers? 

Arun: 

Not at the moment. Right now we are just doing the UK before we launch, globally. 

Kelly: 

Excellent. Okay, Bob, sorry to hear that. It just died. 

That's a pain. Okay, then that's all the questions that we've got. Um, I was wondering if there is just one thing, one aspect that you want us to take away from today's session, what would it be? 

Arun: 

So for what the reason we have the platform is, is, is so that property owners often get approached by different charging point operators and product vendors and things like that. 

And what we are saying is take time to consider what you have because sometimes you might have a great location, it may not, there, there'll be great location, not, not in terms of it being a property, a holiday home, but may be a great location for a charging point because there may be nothing in that area for miles and that might add additional value to your property. 

So if you are, making your, your parking space or your land or additional prop uh, commercial property available, then it is good to see all the options that you have because there are options like you can invest and operate it yourself. 

You can share it, you can share the risk with an operator or you can get a fixed rent from the operator and let them just take care of the rest of it. And then you can get custom, um, custom deals. So things to look at how long, what kind of duration someone's offering because someone might come and say, I only make money on this if it's a year, lease. 

Whereas someone else might come and say, we can do it for seven years and operate it for seven years. So you get, consider all your options before you sign up. 

Kelly:

Yeah, Okay. Yeah, it's actually really interesting 'cause you're talking there not only about it being on like a parking spot outside the property, but you know other areas of your land as well. So if you are a farmer or you have, you know, more extensive land, there are lots of opportunities there too. 

Um, I know when I was talking with Anna earlier and we were talking about funding and one point that Anna made that was really interesting, we were trying to think like, why would somebody not have an EV charger? 

One of the big aspects is the cost. And my question was how much does it actually cost to put an EV charger in? And actually maybe it would be really useful if you could answer that question now. 

Arun:

So the cost really varies. I mean it could vary from, from a thousand pounds onwards till, till till a hundred thousand. It depends upon the speed of the charger. 

So you have to make sure that that then matches the needs of your property, how much traffic is there, and, and if the, you have a property that has got land attached to it and then you've got, you public can also access it, it could become a share, not just for your guests, but you can also make it available to public or you could make it available to, to fleet operators. If you don't want any outsider to come in, you can have fleet operators in your area access it. 

So depending on that, you would then want to have a, a rapid ultra fast charger or a, or a, you know, a fast charger or, or just a slow charger. So the price really varies. It's, it's, it's, it's quite a lot. 

Anna:

Uh, Yeah, it's, it's case by case really depending on, you don't really know the price until someone comes and looks at your land and gives you a quote, um, you know, costs of potentially, um, you know, laying electricity lines further so that the charger can go to a different area. 

Those sort of costs you have to consider as well. Or some people just get a charger installed right next to their garage wall where there's already an electricity supply so that there's, there's no sort of, um, unaccounted for cost that way. So yeah, it really is case by case. There's no set cost, um, for, for it. 

Kelly: 

Do you mind if I ask, sorry, Arun, you mentioned language there that I don't know about. You mentioned fleet. 

Arun: 

Yeah, so fleet is any, um, it could be, someone who's doing deliveries or you could have, a small business in your area, which has got vans so they, which that they use in their business and they, they may not have space to charge their, you know, the electric vans that they will need to buy and they could then use your infrastructure, which would save them the capital cost, but give you assured income from them. So they come and park for a certain number of hours. Uh, it could, could be, it could be different trades people, it could be the, 

Anna: 

The post office is a fleet, the post office is the biggest fleet they've got. They've got electric vehicles. 

Yeah. But it can be any small business or it can be even local trans, rural transport, organisations. Uh, it could be coaches that are coming through depending upon the size of your property and access to that thing as well, to the, to the, to your location. 

Kelly:

So that's really interesting. So that's, that's actually opening up. 

You're not just thinking about guests that can travel to your area who are interested in EV charging, but really thinking about the wider community of people who are also growing in their use of EV vehicles and therefore need a charging solution. 

So there's, yeah, that's actually slightly mind blowing, really what opportunities there are out there if you were interested. 

Arun:

And if you've got cafes, Kelly, if you've got a cafe in your, in your property or something or close, it's something that during the day you'll have a lot of footfall or a store people might come, you know, if you're doing a you know, you're selling something, people may come and charge there for half an hour just just so that they could get that charge. 

And then you might want to put a real ultra fast charger because in 30 minutes it could get up to 80% sometimes of charge. And so it drives traffic to your place, to your destination or your property as well. 

Kelly: 

Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. Okay. I'm very conscious it is 45 minutes and I always like to finish on time.

So, I'd like to just say thank you so much for coming along. I have definitely learned more about electric vehicles in the last couple of weeks talking to you both. Um, so I appreciate it and thank you to everybody who's come along today or if you're watching on replay, I'll send out the video. 

I'll send all the links that Anna and Arun have talked about today as well. If you have any questions, you can see Anna's got her details there. You're more than welcome to get in touch with her. 

As always, you're more than welcome to get in touch with me as well. And you know, I think I've mentioned it a few different times, but we have our Wednesday drop in session now. Anna came to one of them a couple of weeks ago. 

You're more than welcome to come to our drop in sessions any Wednesday from half past to half past one. And I'll include the links there too and you can ask us any questions. Okay, thank you very much. 

Thanks very much and uh, I'll see you again soon.


The webinar with Anna Robertson of CHRGR.io provides valuable insights into the challenges, solutions, options, and common questions surrounding EV chargers for holiday rental owners. 

By understanding the unique needs of EV-driving guests and exploring innovative charging solutions, holiday rental owners can market and attract new guests, and enhance their guest experience while contributing to a more sustainable future.

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