Enjoy the view from the Parc 55 Wyndham - and charge your car

It’s been a big week for electric cars, with the launch of the Nissan Leaf in the UK. It’s a smart business that takes advantage of these green developments, both to help its customers, and advance its own eco-credentials.

Hotels are the obvious partners to the electric car (EV) driver. Arrive at the end of the day, connect your car, drive away fully charged (you, as well as the car) the next morning. And in the USA it’s even easier: handle your keys to those efficient, fast running valets in the forecourt, and they’ll take care of it for you.

One of the first hotels in the world, perhaps not surprisingly, to offer free overnight charging to electric cars is in California. The Parc 55 Wyndham San Francisco has installed six “Juice Bars”, car charging stations free of cost to guests, visitors and local residents, in a deal struck with the hotel’s owners Highgate Hotels, and Propark America, its parking garage management company.

“We see a growing number of hybrid and completely electric cars on the street,” says Matthew Martinucci, director of sales and marketing at the Parc 55 Wyndham. The hotel has positioned a charging station at the entrance of the parking garage, and it’s designed to be an attractive eye-catching facility.

Parc 55 Wyndham boasts a number of other green initiatives, which have earned its certification as an Energy Star hotel from the U.S. EPA. Eco-features include  low flow toilets and fixtures, and programmes for composting, recycling and processing cooking oil for alternative fuel.