In an exclusive interview with Suki Sangha, Sales Executive at Virta, we explore their innovative electric vehicle charging systems and how they can elevate your hotel business.
Please introduce us to Virta and what the brand strives to achieve.
Virta is a global pioneer in developing smart EV charging services. Our platform provides businesses with an easy-to-use solution for managing their EV charging operations. Over 400 hotel partners currently run their EV charging operations with us, which gives us credible insights into EV driver behaviour at hotels.
How can the availability of EV charging benefit the overall guest experience?
The EV market has been steadily growing in the past few years, and with more electric vehicles on the roads, EV drivers need to charge at their destinations. A survey we ran with Kantar in 2022 showed that for 87% of EV drivers, the availability of EV charging at hotels has an influence when deciding what hotel to stay in.
Hotels provide the perfect setting for guests to charge for the next day while staying overnight. In addition, EV charging serves the hotel’s meeting and event facilities guests, and the increasing adoption of electric fleet vehicles means that corporate customers want to come to a hotel and charge their company EVs. So, EV charging is becoming one of the amenities hotel guests are demanding.
How does your charging solution help elevate the overall hotel business?
We provide the whole package – software, hardware, EV driver services and more, so hotels can fully integrate EV charging into their larger services portfolio under their brand. EV drivers expect a reliable branded service that builds up customer loyalty. Once the EV driver parks at a hotel and plugs in their car, they are more likely to stay in the hotel area for the duration of the charging event and use other hotel facilities; the hotel restaurant or the lobby bar, for example.
Our goal is to enable our partners to focus on their core business while still benefiting from the EV charging service. Long term, we are ready to enable our hotel partners to develop advanced pricing and loyalty tools and integrate EV charging into larger hotel CRM systems.
As the issue of sustainability rises, in your expert opinion, is it important for hotels to focus on this, and how does your charging solution work in line with this?
Hotels everywhere strive to lower their CO2 emissions, and EV charging can be an essential part of their sustainability programmes. EV charging has the power to present the hotel’s green credentials the moment the customer enters the parking lot.
Visit www.virta.global and get in touch with our EV charging solution experts.
