South Florida's Hotel Boom Puts EV Charging Into the Parking Budget

Miami-Dade County is on track to add 1,954 hotel rooms in 2026, the fifth-highest total among U.S. markets, according to CoStar projections reported by Miami Today. Just up the coast, the 801-room Omni Fort Lauderdale Hotel opened in December near the Broward County Convention Center, adding another major property to South Florida's hospitality market.The expansion comes as hotel parking has become a more valuable part of the property business.Parking revenue at U.S. hotels rose 23.1% from 2019 to 2023, more than four times the growth in total hotel revenue over the same period, according to CBRE Hotels Research. In CBRE's sample, hotel parking departments posted a 61.3% profit margin in 2023, compared with 58.7% for other operated departments. EV charging is becoming part of that parking calculation. A 2022 Greenview and American Hotel & Lodging Association report cited by CBRE found that 26.6% of U.S. hotels had charging stations, and CBRE said it expects that share has risen since then. Most hotel charging stations are Level 2 chargers, which fit the longer dwell time of guests who leave their vehicles parked overnight.That dwell time changes the economics of a charging site. Hotels and residential towers can keep the same vehicle in a space for hours, giving slower charging equipment time to deliver a meaningful charge without requiring the speed of a highway-oriented fast-charging site. Bobby Wallace, CEO of Key Largo-based commercial solar and EV charging developer Wallace Energy, said his team looks at how long vehicles remain parked alongside the traffic surrounding a property. "Calculating how long a car sits should be evaluated alongside traffic in the area. I've turned down sites on busy corners where the parking turns over every 15 minutes and I've said yes to condo garages that end up billing all night. That math determines whether a site will pay," Wallace said. South Florida's condominium market adds another layer to that calculation.Florida law says a condominium association cannot prohibit a unit owner from installing an EV charger in the owner's limited common element or exclusively designated parking area, subject to the requirements in the statute. The electricity must be separately metered or measured by an embedded meter and paid by the owner, who is also responsible for installation, operation, maintenance, repair and applicable insurance costs.The same statute allows a condominium board to install or operate charging stations on common property and establish what unit owners, residents or guests pay to use them. That gives a board a second model: individual owners can install chargers in qualifying assigned spaces or the association can operate shared charging infrastructure for the building.Once chargers are running, the operational question shifts from installation to whether they continue accepting payments and delivering successful charging sessions.Wallace Energy says the Horizon platform it deploys uses remote diagnostics before field service is scheduled and can resolve up to 70% of charger faults remotely through its AI self-repair capability. The company also says the charging platform posted a 97.65% charge success rate across more than 100,000 chargers worldwide in 2025. Those figures are based on Wallace Energy's platform operating data.For Miami condominium properties, software can also separate the electricity used by individual drivers instead of leaving charging costs on a common-area bill. A board-operated system can establish charges for residents and guests, an authority already provided under Florida condominium law.Hotels face a similar billing question. Networked charging can distinguish among guest vehicles, public users and property fleets, while pricing and charger status can be managed without changing the physical equipment."The install is the shortest part of the project. What an owner is really signing up for is the utility timeline on the front end and the operations on the back end," Wallace said.South Florida's hotel pipeline makes that operating question harder to ignore. CoStar expects Miami-Dade alone to add nearly 2,000 rooms this year, while Fort Lauderdale has already added one of the region's largest new hotels. At the same time, CBRE's national data shows parking revenue growing faster than hotel revenue overall and Level 2 charging fitting the long stays that hotel garages already provide.For hotel operators and condominium boards, EV charging is moving into the same budget conversation as parking revenue, electrical capacity and garage operations. In South Florida, the cars are already sitting there.