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Why your car parks should be pre-bookable

All our car parks have anti-covid measures
Pre-booking online at Allgäu Airport.
Friday, July 5, 2013

Why your car parks should be pre-bookable

How visible is your airport's car park?
With parking being an important source of non-aviation revenue, this is a question that each airport should be asking itself – can customers make the most of the facilities you can offer?

Parking is often an essential when taking a flight, potentially used by millions every year. With the budget holiday market growing increasingly popular, airports have had to adapt their services to fall in line with the price ranges set by low-cost airlines; customers do not want to pay more for a parking space than for their plane ticket.

If an airport's car parks are not pre-bookable, visibility decreases and customers, in most cases mistakenly, assume that parking on-site is more expensive and potentially turn to competitor car parks, outside airport premises.

ParkCloud's Core network of more than 100 comparison websites, which offer both on and off-site parking solutions at airports all over the world, are each tailored to a particular country and language, and offer pre-booking of the parking options available. The popularity of the network has increased every year since its launch. New websites for new markets are launched frequently, and a clear message can be seen in the overall results – pre-booking is now an essential service.

How do you make sure that your car parks retain their fair share of the market?
Since competitor car parks can be so readily available in today's market, it is important to be sure that your service is equally visible. This requires asking questions such as: "Does my website present my airport’s parking options?", "Are these options detailed and varied enough?", and most importantly, "Can my customers pre-book?".

ParkCloud has implemented pre-booking systems for a number of airports across Europe, through its ParkCloud >Direct system, a comprehensive pre-booking solution. Results have shown that pre-booking always improves occupancy rates, whilst at the same time providing invaluable information on the usage of the car park, which can then be used in future marketing.

Making your prices stand out
Whilst it may not be possible to join the war for the lowest price with your competitors, there are other ways to make sure that your car parks are marketed effectively.

Optimising your yield management and presenting your prices in the right way can have a very positive effect on the performance of your parking spaces. Identifying the right niches within your market helps you to target customers more effectively, with products aimed at different demographics – for instance, what is it that customers expect when booking a low-cost car park? What percentage of your market are business travellers and would want a VIP service?

ParkCloud has always found that choice is a deciding factor when customers are pre-booking through the ParkCloud Core network – the more choice customers have, the more likely they are to make a decision. With more choice comes more flexibility, which in turn reassures the customer that the service they are choosing is the best one for them.

Why should your car parks be pre-bookable?
Coming back to the original question, the answer lies not just in the increasingly competitive market but in the choices available to customers. Pre-booking a parking space saves time when the customer arrives at the airport, and provides them with the reassurance that there will be a space available for their car on arrival. Knowing how much this space costs, and being able to pay in advance where possible, means that the journey start becomes that much smoother, making their experience at your airport that much more pleasant. The car park is often the first and last impression a customer has of an airport.

If you're thinking about how to improve the use of your airport's car parks, ParkCloud can provide solutions. ParkCloud >Direct provides the means to get a customisable booking form easily integrated into your website, allowing to you to upsell your products, and access valuable customer data through parking bookings. ParkCloud >Direct is both popular with customers and beneficial to the airport's parking management.

Get in touch for more details before the 31st July 2013 to benefit from our reduced commission rates on offer this summer.