A quarter of new cars sold worldwide are now plug-ins. Their drivers pick where to stay the way laptop owners once picked hotels with wifi.
Last reviewed 6 July 2026 · ~7 minute read
The short version: EV drivers plan stays around charging, the booking platforms have made “EV charger” a searchable filter, and Airbnb’s own data says listings offering one get booked more nights and earn more. A charger is a one-off cost of roughly £1,000–£1,700 installed; a handful of incremental booked nights covers it — and unlike wifi, you can bill for it.
The demand is no longer hypothetical
In 2025, plug-in vehicles (battery-electric plus plug-in hybrid) took roughly 25% of new car sales globally. The countries most of your guests come from are at or above the curve: around a third of new UK car sales, about 15% in Australia, and around 10% in the US and Canada — all still climbing (IEA Global EV Outlook). Every one of those cars needs somewhere to charge on holiday — and unlike petrol, the refill happens where the car sleeps.
That last point is the whole business case. An EV driver doesn’t want to spend 40 minutes of their holiday at a motorway rapid charger; they want to wake up to a full battery. Accommodation with charging isn’t a nice-to-have for them — it changes which properties make the shortlist at all, especially in rural and coastal areas where public charging is thin (which is exactly where holiday lets are).
The platforms have already decided this matters
- Airbnb added an “EV charger” search filter — searches using it grew more than 80% year-on-year (2022→2023), and Airbnb reported over 78,000 listings offering charging back in 2023, alongside a hardware-discount partnership with ChargePoint for US hosts.
- Airbnb’s own reporting states that listings with an EV charger are, on average, booked for more nights and generate more income than listings without one.
- Filters work as exclusion, not decoration: when an EV-driving family ticks the box, every property without a charger silently disappears from their search. You’re not competing badly — you’re not competing at all.
💡 The wifi parallel is exact: twenty years ago wifi was a differentiator, then a filter, then a hygiene factor whose absence costs bookings. EV charging is moving along the same curve — the difference is that this amenity can pay for itself directly, because charging is billable in a way wifi never was.
The maths for one property
Take a realistic UK holiday-let case (the shape is the same in any currency):
- One-off cost: 7 kW OCPP wallbox + installation ≈ £1,000–£1,700 (our buyer’s guide breaks this down; landlord grants of up to £500/socket apply to some mixed-use properties).
- Incremental bookings: at a £150/night average, the install pays for itself with 7–12 extra booked nights — total, not per year. One EV-driving family choosing you because of the charger, twice a season, clears it in year one or two.
- Running cost: essentially zero when idle — and the electricity guests use is billable rather than absorbed (how to price it).
- Defensive value: a proper charger also ends the granny-charger problem — guests silently charging from wall sockets on your bill and your wiring.
The soft returns compound the hard ones: “EV charging” in a listing title photographs well in reviews (“charger on-site was a lifesaver”), and in areas with sparse public charging it earns you the EV traveller’s strongest currency — being recommendable to other EV drivers.
The honest counterpoints
Three, and they’re all manageable. Upfront cost is real — if your market has near-zero EV traffic today, the payback horizon is longer (check what share of cars in your source cities are plug-ins, not your village). Free-forever is a leak — decide deliberately whether charging is included, flat-fee or metered before the first guest plugs in, not after a heavy-usage season. And an unmanaged charger creates its own friction — who gets it when two EV guests overlap, and who pays for what? That’s an access-and-billing problem, which is software, not hardware.
Make the amenity pay its way
Guest Charge turns a wallbox into a managed, billable amenity: each booking gets its own charging link, guests see the price up front and pay online, per-kWh stays settle automatically from the charger’s own data, and you see every session. The charger wins you the booking; the software makes sure it doesn’t cost you money.
Sources
- IEA — Global EV Outlook 2026: trends in electric cars
- Airbnb — Over 78,000 listings now offer electric vehicle charging
- Airbnb — ChargePoint partnership announcement
- Pew Research — a quarter of new car sales worldwide are EVs or hybrids
General information. Adoption figures are 2025 sales-share data from the sources above; your local market will differ — check it before you spend.