CREJ - Property Management Quarterly - August 2015
Parking is a vital element of property management, impacting tenant satisfaction and the building owner’s bottom line. If parking is inadequate or unpleasant, it can undermine an owner’s efforts to attract and retain tenants. And when owners rely on parking facilities to generate revenue, the importance of providing safe, convenient and pleasant parking becomes that much more clear. Every building owner has experienced the headaches that can be caused by parking facilities that don’t realize their potential. The question is, how can you eliminate those headaches? For many building owners, the answer can be found in technology. Parking is experiencing a technology revolution that is making parking facilities more parker-friendly, convenient to operate and profitable. New way-finding tools, mobile applications and other cutting-edge equipment aren’t just improving customer service, they are improving the bottom line too. Access and revenue control. The benefits of technology begin at the garage’s entrance. Automating entrances and exits streamlines the parking process, significantly cutting down on the time it takes to enter and exit the facility. In addition to making the facility more customer friendly, it promotes sustainability by reducing the amount of time drivers are forced to sit in their idling vehicles waiting to leave. Automating access and revenue control can reduce the risk of theft by eliminating the need for cashiers. Of course, reducing the number of staff required within a parking facility also reduces the personnel costs. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, modern access and revenue control equipment provides important administrative benefits by collecting and reporting utilization data. When owners and operators have complete data about parking behavior, they are better equipped to make informed decisions about how to manage parking resources, including how much to charge. Parking guidance. One of the most promising trends is the introduction of parking sensors. The sensors, which are located in each of a facility’s parking spaces, record whether a space is occupied and indicate the status of the space through different colored lights. The sensors also transmit use information to signs located at the entrances to each floor and on the end of each parking aisle, showing drivers exactly how many parking spaces can be found on a given floor or in a particular row. The benefits to parkers are apparent. By guiding parkers to open spaces, the sensors eliminate the need to go aisle to aisle (or floor to floor) searching for an available space. This provides a more convenient parking experience, particularly for people who are in a rush. Also, it significantly reduces the risk of vehicle/vehicle and vehicle/pedestrian accidents. As important as these customer service benefits are, though, there are direct benefits to facility owners and operators as well. The sensors collect key data about parking use and trends within a facility, and then transmit that data to a cloud-based management system that tracks parkers’ behavior to help make informed operational decisions. Finally, by helping parkers find their spaces quickly, single-space sensors can reduce wear and tear on the structure significantly, which cuts maintenance and repair costs and can save owners hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of the facility. Also there are important environmental benefits because the emissions produced by vehicles within the parking structure are reduced. There’s an app for that. Some of the most interesting and exciting developments in parking revolve around mobile technology. Probably the best known is pay-by-phone applications that permit parkers to pay with their cell phones. Many cities have turned to mobile pay in recent years, and now private owners are starting to follow suit because of the administrative and customer service benefits. In addition to offering customer convenience, the apps record data that owners can use to manage their parking resources more effectively and make more informed pricing choices. Also there are bar code apps that can be used to accept payment via cell phone for parking sessions. Other mobile apps can send push notifications to drivers telling them where parking is available so they don’t have to circle blocks looking for on- or off-street parking. This can be a particularly attractive tool for owners with several parking facilities. By providing such added convenience to parkers, owners can capture drivers as regular customers. Also, mobile apps require customers to register, which gives facility owners valuable information about their user demographics for targeted marketing campaigns. Technology is transforming parking. By allowing owners to streamline parking operations and provide incredible utility, these technologies allow owners to better manage and market facilities and save thousands of dollars in operational costs. And by providing a more customer-friendly parking experience, the technologies offer an important competitive advantage to owners who rely on their parking facilities to provide revenue or to improve the quality of life for tenants. For most facility owners, technology can be the cure for their parking-induced headaches.