Choosing an EV Charger for Your Holiday Let, B&B or Small Hotel

🔍🔌

The charger you buy decides what you can offer guests for the next decade. Four questions get it right.

Last reviewed 6 July 2026 · ~8 minute read

The short version: for almost every holiday let, B&B and small hotel the right answer is a 7 kW, untethered, OCPP-compatible wallbox — and OCPP is the one requirement you can’t retrofit your way out of. If you plan to bill guests per kWh, add “billing-approved meter” to the list (or fit a certified sub-meter). Check your grant eligibility before you buy, not after.

Question 1: how fast? (Slower than you think)

Guest charging is destination charging: the car sits for 10+ hours overnight. A 7 kW single-phase wallbox fully replenishes a typical EV overnight (30 kWh in ~4½ hours) — which is why it’s the sweet spot for accommodation. 22 kW sounds better but needs a three-phase supply most properties don’t have, and most cars can’t take more than 7–11 kW on AC anyway. DC rapid chargers are five-figure infrastructure for sites selling 30-minute charging to passing traffic — not for guests who are asleep. Spend the difference on a second 7 kW socket instead.

Question 2: tethered or untethered?

Tethered means the charging cable is permanently attached to the unit; untethered means the unit has just a socket, and the driver plugs in their own cable. For a private driveway this is a coin-toss of personal preference — for hosting, the trade-offs shift. The honest ledger:

Tethered (fixed cable)

Pros:

Grab-and-plug convenience — nothing for the guest to fetch, nothing they can forget
Works for the rare guest whose own cable is missing, damaged or left at home
No risk of a guest arriving cable-less and being unable to charge at all

Cons:

The cable lives outdoors 24/7 — UV, weather and wear are yours to own, and a damaged cable takes the whole amenity offline until repaired
Fixed length: park awkwardly (or drive a car with an oddly-placed port) and it doesn’t reach
Trip hazard and untidiness between stays unless guests re-holster it perfectly — which they won’t
Locked to one connector type; a future connector shift makes the hardware dated
Theft/vandalism target on properties that stand empty between bookings

Untethered (socket only)

Pros:

Nothing to weather, wear out, steal or trip over — the wall unit is sealed and self-contained between stays
Every guest uses the cable made for their car, at the length they carry
Universal: any current or future plug-in vehicle with the standard connector just works
Usually slightly cheaper to buy, and cleaner-looking on the wall

Cons:

Depends on the guest bringing their cable — a guest who left it at home can’t charge
Marginally more faff per session (fetch cable from boot, plug both ends)

💡 Our recommendation: untethered — for hosting, the durability, universality and tidy-between-stays arguments outweigh the convenience of a fixed cable, and the one real drawback is cheap to manage: tell guests to bring their own charging cable. Put it in the listing amenity description, the booking confirmation and the pre-arrival message (“EV charger on-site — please bring your vehicle’s Type 2 charging cable”). Nearly every EV is supplied with one; guests just need the nudge not to leave it in the garage. Belt-and-braces hosts keep one spare cable on a refundable-deposit basis for the guest who forgets anyway — one cable covers the whole property.

Question 3: can it speak OCPP? (The make-or-break)

OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol) is the open standard that lets a charger be managed by software the manufacturer didn’t write — start/stop control, live energy data, session records. It’s the difference between a charger you own and a charger you rent the brains of:

With OCPP, you can plug the charger into any management or billing platform (including Guest Charge), switch platforms later, and keep working if the manufacturer’s app or cloud is discontinued.
Without it, you’re locked to the manufacturer’s app — usually built for a homeowner charging their own car, with no concept of guests, stays, or payments.

⚠️ Check before you buy: “smart charger” on the box does not mean OCPP — plenty of app-controlled chargers speak only their maker’s private protocol, and some support OCPP but keep it disabled or paywalled. Ask the vendor two questions in writing: “Does this model support OCPP 1.6J or 2.0.1?” and “Can I point it at a third-party OCPP server myself?” We maintain a database of consumer chargers and their OCPP compatibility — start there.

Question 4: will you bill per kWh?

If yes, the charger’s meter matters as much as its protocol: billing by measured energy makes the meter a trade-measurement instrument in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, each with its own approval regime (MID Class B, NTEP/CTEP, Measurement Canada registration, NMI pattern approval). Very few domestic wallboxes ship with a billing-approved meter — the usual fix is a certified DIN-rail sub-meter on the charger’s circuit at install time (cheap then, an extra call-out later). The full country-by-country rules: Can you legally bill guests for EV charging? If you’ll use flat per-stay pricing instead, any accurate charger will do — no approval needed anywhere.

Costs, grants and the install itself

Hardware: quality 7 kW OCPP wallboxes run roughly £400–£900 / US$400–$800 / A$800–$1,500.
Installation: typically £300–£800+ depending on the cable run to your consumer unit; a dedicated circuit and (in most places) notification/permit work is required — use a certified EV installer, and ask them to quote the sub-meter at the same time if you’ll bill per kWh.
Grants (UK): the EV chargepoint grant pays up to £500 per socket from 1 April 2026 for eligible landlords — but properties used only as holiday accommodation are excluded; mixed-use may qualify. Schemes run to 31 March 2027. Elsewhere, check state/provincial incentives — several Australian states and Canadian provinces run their own.
UK regulatory note: chargers sold in GB must meet the smart charge point regulations (they will, if bought from a UK vendor) — but remember smart-regs compliance says nothing about billing approval.

Small hotels: two sockets beat one fast one

If you regularly host multiple EVs, prioritise socket count over speed — two 7 kW units serve two overnight guests completely; one 22 kW unit serves one car at a time (and usually at 7–11 kW anyway). Load management (sharing one supply between chargers) is a solved problem on OCPP hardware. And once there’s more than one guest and one charger, you’ll want per-stay access control and payment — which is exactly the layer Guest Charge adds.

Buy once, manage forever

Any OCPP-compatible charger can be managed with Guest Charge: per-booking guest access links, flat-per-stay or per-kWh billing with upfront pricing, automatic settlement from the charger’s own energy data, and a full audit trail. Check your shortlist against our supported chargers database before you order.

See how it works · Pricing

Sources

General information, not electrical or purchasing advice. Prices are mid-2026 ballparks; get written quotes and written OCPP confirmation.