Future-Proofing Holiday Parks With EV Charging Infrastructure
How holiday park operators can plan EV charging investment to stay ahead of guest demand for the next decade, not just the next booking season.
Every capital investment a holiday park operator makes carries an implicit bet on what guests will expect
in five or ten years' time. New shower blocks, upgraded Wi-Fi, better play areas — all of it is planned
with an eye on the horizon, not just this season's bookings. EV charging deserves exactly the same long-
view treatment, and too often it isn't getting it.
The risk with treating charging as a reactive, minimal-viable addition — a couple of sockets bolted onto
the site office car park — is that it solves this year's guest complaint while creating next year's
infrastructure headache. EV adoption among leisure travellers is only moving in one direction, and a site
that installs the bare minimum today is very likely installing again in three years, at higher cost and with
more disruption to a working site.
The alternative is designing the electrical backbone for where guest demand is heading, even if the full
chargepoint rollout happens in phases. That means specifying underlying cabling, switchgear, and grid
connection capacity for the site's realistic five-to-ten-year guest EV ownership trajectory, then adding
chargepoints to that backbone incrementally as demand actually materialises. The expensive, disruptive
part of any charging project is the underlying electrical work, not the chargers themselves — so it pays
to get that part right once.
This is also where site operators can be smarter about capital allocation. Rather than a single large
investment, a phased rollout — starting with a cluster of chargers near the most premium pitches or
lodges, then expanding based on measured utilisation — spreads cost while still building toward full site
coverage. It also generates real usage data that makes the business case for phase two far more
concrete than a projection ever could.
Grid capacity is worth flagging specifically, because rural and semi-rural holiday park locations often sit
on constrained electrical supplies that weren't designed with EV charging in mind. Understanding DNO
connection capacity and realistic upgrade costs early — before guest expectations force a rushed
decision — gives operators far more control over both timeline and budget.
The parks thinking furthest ahead are treating EV charging infrastructure the same way they'd treat a
new water or drainage system: essential, long-life infrastructure that's expensive to retrofit and cheap
to plan properly the first time. That mindset shift, more than any specific chargepoint choice, is what
separates a future-proofed site from one perpetually one step behind guest expectations.
Want to Learn More?
Get in touch to discover how PLUG Charging can support your EV journey
Contact Us