EV charging at hotels in Türkiye: free or paid, your own unit or a network operator

When installing a hotel ev charging station in Türkiye, selling charging is a regulated activity. EPDK's charging regulation defines charging service as energy transfer for commercial purposes and for a fee, and a paid station must be connected to a licensed charging network. A hotel chooses between a free unit for guests, a network operator's station, or its own paid service, after checking electrical capacity.

A guest books, then writes one line to the front desk: can I charge my car overnight? The answer now involves three decisions that are easy to mix up, namely who owns the unit, who is allowed to sell the electricity, and whether the building's supply can carry the load. After reading this guide you will be able to place your hotel in one of three workable models, brief your technical manager with the right questions, and write bay rules the front desk can state in one sentence.

Do hotels in Türkiye have to provide EV charging?#

No hotel-specific charging duty appears in the two regulations that matter. The EV rule in the parking regulation is written for buildings, not for hotels as a category, so read it as a construction rule that may reach a hotel, not as a hotel obligation.

The Otopark Yönetmeliği (Resmî Gazete 22 February 2018, No. 30340; consolidated text last amended 27 December 2025, No. 33120) sets its rule in Article 5(1)(j), added on 25 March 2021: where a new building's mandatory parking is 20 spaces or more, the building permit application must show at least 5 percent of those spaces, and never fewer than one, arranged for electric vehicles under the relevant standards. In practice, "arranged" usually means infrastructure readiness, such as conduits and electrical capacity, and it may include or require a charging unit depending on local interpretation and standards. Confirm with your municipality whether a functional unit is expected at the permit stage. The Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change's parking regulation (consolidated text, 27 December 2025) (opens in a new tab) is the source for all of this.

That duty sits in the permit application, not in daily operation, and the regulation applies to buildings that receive a building permit after it entered into force (Article 1). An existing hotel adding a bay to a car park built years ago is not answering this rule. Until 1 January 2023 the same rates were applied as 2 percent and 5 percent, so a permit drawn in that window was calculated on the older numbers.

A separate rule in Article 6(5) covers new district and general car parks and shopping-centre car parks: at least 10 percent of spaces arranged for electric vehicles including charging units, and in shopping centres over 30,000 square metres at least one unit, over 70,000 square metres at least two, must have fast-charging capacity.

What an existing hotel does face is different: the electrical connection rules of its distribution company, the building and permit rules of its municipality, and, if it sells the electricity, the charging regulation described below. Confirm your own case with your municipality and your legal adviser before you commit to a layout, because the answer depends on when the building was permitted and what the permit drawings show.

What counts as a charging service under the EPDK regulation?#

A charging service is energy transfer to charge an electric vehicle, carried out for commercial purposes and for a fee. Both elements sit in the definition together, and everything else in the regulation follows from them.

Article 3(1)(p) of the Şarj Hizmeti Yönetmeliği (Resmî Gazete 2 April 2022, No. 31797; consolidated text last amended 23 March 2026, No. 33202) defines the service as energy transfer for charging electric vehicles, carried out for commercial purposes and for a fee. Running a charging network requires a charging network operator licence from EPDK (Article 4(1)). The network is the commercial layer that a station plugs into.

At a charging station, charging service may be provided only while the station is connected to a charging network (Article 21(4)). This is the sentence that separates a paid hotel service from a private unit. Two roles exist on site: the network operator, who holds the licence, and the charging station operator, who runs stations on site and provides the service to third parties under a certificate from a network operator (Article 3(1)(s) and Article 20). The EPDK charging regulation (consolidated text, 23 March 2026) (opens in a new tab) is the source for all of these.

Article 5, as amended on 23 March 2026, exempts two kinds of equipment from the network connection: private charging stations that carry out no commercial activity under any name or by any method, and charging units that users install, or have installed, only for their own needs. Supplying electricity to electric vehicles for commercial purposes from a station that is not connected to a network is dealt with under Article 48(1)(c) of the Electricity Market Consumer Services Regulation. The grid operator, meaning TEİAŞ, the distribution company or the organised industrial zone, notifies EPDK and also reports the matter to the competent administration and to the defterdarlık (Article 32(4)).

Whether charging guests nothing still counts as commercial activity under another name is a legal reading, not a marketing one. Take that question to counsel in writing before you publish an offer.

Which of the three models fits your hotel?#

There are three workable models, and they differ in who holds the licence, who takes the guest's money and who carries the electrical risk. Choose the model before you choose the hardware.

Model one, a free unit for guests: the hotel owns the unit, sets no fee, uses no card reader and no app, and treats the electricity as a cost of the room. On its face this fits the private and own-needs wording of Article 5, but keep the arrangement genuinely free and documented, and let counsel confirm the reading.

Model two, a network operator's station: the operator holds the licence and the certificate, the guest pays the operator, and the hotel supplies space, power and access. The contract must settle who pays for the electricity and how it is metered, rent or a share, signage and branding, maintenance and uptime, insurance and liability, the term, and what happens on the day the operator leaves.

Model three, the hotel's own paid service: the hotel runs the station as a charging station operator under a network operator's certificate, or contracts an operator to run it on its behalf. The station must be connected to a network, and the guest's payment is a commercial charging transaction.

A common mistake is letting one contract decide the other. A hotel can run two free AC units for its own guests and, separately, host a commercial station in the public part of the car park; those are two decisions with two sets of rules. Ask each candidate what happens to the unit at the end of the term, who removes it, and who owns the cable and the meter. These clauses cost nothing to negotiate at signature and a great deal afterwards. No operator names belong in your decision memo: compare on the contract terms and the metering, not on the logo on the unit.

Does the hotel have the electrical capacity for charging?#

Get two numbers before you look at hardware: the contracted connection power and the measured peak demand in your busiest week. A charger is a continuous load that arrives at the same hour as the rest of the hotel's night load.

The technical manager should produce the contracted power from the supply agreement and the peak demand from the meter or the building management system, not from memory. Overnight charging overlaps with laundry, the kitchen closing down, and heating or cooling running through the night. The question is not whether the hotel can carry one car, but whether it can carry the chargers at the hour the hotel is already at its highest.

Ask the distribution company what a connection capacity increase involves, how long it takes, and whether the site transformer has headroom. This is a queue, not a purchase. Check the internal installation as well: the cable route from the main distribution board, the protection devices, the metering point, and whether the parking area panel has a spare way.

Some hardware can throttle charging when the building's demand rises. Treat that as a technical measure with a written setting, not as a promise to the guest that charging is always fast. Do not size the cable and the panel for two units if the plan is eight, and do not pay for eight if the realistic demand is two. The civil work is the part you cannot redo cheaply. A charger that trips the main breaker is a power cut with a guest attached; the first-hour routine in our power cut checklist for hotels is worth reading before the electrician arrives.

AC or DC, how many units, and where do they go?#

Alternating-current units suit a guest who sleeps while the car charges; direct-current fast units suit a short stop and draw far more power. Count from your realistic peak night, not from a forecast.

Alternating current, the slower kind, is the natural fit for destination charging: the guest arrives in the evening, plugs in, and leaves in the morning. Direct current, the fast kind, needs a much larger supply and belongs where cars stop briefly. Count from the busiest night you can actually describe, not from an assumed future. A small number of bays with clear rules beats a larger number that the building cannot feed.

Place the units near the building to shorten cable runs and to keep the bay visible and lit. Do not take the two best sea-view bays; the guest who paid for the view did not pay for the cable. Cable management matters more than it sounds: a holster or hook so the cable is not on the ground, and a bollard or wheel stop so the unit is not hit by a reversing car.

In an enclosed garage, ventilation, fire detection and the fire authority's view all enter the design, and the fire route and hydrant access must stay clear whatever the bay layout. Signage at the bay should say how to start, who to call, what it costs if anything, and whether it is for in-house guests only. A guest should not have to ask the front desk to read a sign. If the car park is part of a new build or a refurbishment, settle the charger positions with the cabling plan, as with other low-voltage design decisions before the walls close, rather than after the paving.

How does the charge reach the guest's bill?#

It reaches the bill only if the hotel is the one providing the service. With a network operator the guest pays the operator directly, and nothing goes on the folio.

Free model: the electricity is a cost of the room. Read the charger's meter monthly and carry it as a utility line, so that the general manager can see what the amenity costs rather than guessing. The discipline is the same as with the daily energy meter readings a hotel can act on: a fixed reading day and a recorded figure.

Hotel-bills model: the hotel needs a way to attribute a session to a room, either a meter reading taken at departure or a fixed session fee the guest agrees to at check-in. The amount is posted as a charge on the guest's bill, and the fiscal document follows the bill at checkout. Operator-bills model: the guest pays the operator, and the hotel invoices the operator for rent or its share. The front desk cannot adjust the amount, so the script at check-in must say so plainly.

Do not publish a price per kilowatt hour until the tax treatment is settled. The hotel sets its own price, and this article cannot set it for you. If charging is metered, treat the reading like any other utility meter in the building, read on a fixed day and recorded, so that the monthly figure is comparable.

What rules should the charging bay have?#

Write the bay rules before the first guest arrives, publish them where the guest books, and make the front desk able to state them in one sentence.

Decide who may use the bay: in-house guests only, or the public as well. Public use moves the arrangement toward a commercial service, so make that choice deliberately rather than by leaving the gate open. Blocking is the complaint you will hear most: a charged car left in the bay all day. A sign, a front-desk script and a stated consequence solve more of it than any hardware.

If the hotel charges for time spent plugged in after charging finishes, the guest must know before plugging in. A rule disclosed after the fact is a dispute. Night use raises noise, lighting and access questions: whether the garage gate opens at two in the morning, and whether anyone is on duty to help.

Damage and cable theft are practical risks: a lockable holster, camera coverage of the bay, and a short incident log that records date, room and outcome. Tell the insurer the bay exists and what it is used for; a charger added quietly to a policy is a claim waiting to be refused. Describe the bay on the website exactly as it is: how many, which kind, free or paid, and for whom, following the same hotel website checklist for describing facilities accurately. A guest who arrives to find the only unit occupied because the listing was vague writes the review.

What to do next#

The next step is a single page from your technical manager: contracted connection power, measured peak demand and the hour it occurs. With those two numbers you can choose between a free unit for guests, a network operator's station and your own paid service, and only then take the layout to the municipality, the distribution company and your accountant. The regulation decides what you may sell; the electrical capacity decides what you can build; the bay rules decide whether guests trust the listing.