Last Updated: 22nd March 2022 How can smarter parking solutions help to support quieter sites? With many car parks currently quieter than usual and a genuine need to ensure customers return to a site when it is able to reopen, it has never been more vital that businesses look for new ways to make the most of the capital assets they have available to them. Explore more There’s a common misconception that when your business is quiet or closed, your car park is standing empty and, as a result, it isn’t contributing to your business in any way. This isn’t necessarily the case; it might just be that its full potential hasn’t been realised. With many car parks currently quieter than usual and a genuine need to ensure customers return to a site when it is able to reopen, it has never been more vital that businesses look for new ways to make the most of the capital assets they have available to them. By taking a closer look at your parking, you can transform your site, creating new opportunities for your business to succeed. Monetising extra capacity All car parks have periods where they are quiet. There is a natural ebb and flow to how busy a business gets during a working day and those peaks and troughs are often mirrored by the humble car park. Understanding when those lulls in activity occur and how long they tend to last is key to taking steps to make them work in your favour. Tracking your occupancy levels can help you understand how much free space you have. Those spaces can then be let out to motorists through a pre-booking service to allow your site to be used by motorists looking for parking. The process for pre-booking is simple: Register your parking spaces Motorists pre-book and pay for their parking ANPR tracks when they exit and leave Learn more about pre-booking → In areas where demand for parking is high but space is limited, deciding to let out otherwise private parking can help ease parking pressures in the area. By doing this, you’re helping to turn that extra space into an additional margin-rich revenue stream, increasing footfall to the area and introducing new audiences and customers to your business. In the face of the pandemic, this helps to generate additional revenue while your business is quieter but also lets you put a service in place that will benefit you long after restrictions lift and day to day operations begin to return to normal. Getting ahead of the competition Capitalising on unused parking spaces is one way to leverage a site being quieter in your favour. You can also use quieter periods, such as the ones caused by the ongoing pandemic to take a detailed look at your site and address any potential issues. Stepping back and taking an objective look at your car park can help you to identify areas for improvement. Making these improvements can provide a better experience for your customers, and importantly, provide a better experience than your competition. You might have barriers on your site that have been in place for a while. If so, it may be worth integrating it with your existing ANPR system. This allows you to extend the life of your barrier investment or improve the solution you have in place, as ANPR automation creates a more free-flowing parking experience which can help increase throughput of traffic on your car park. Another area for improvement might be the payment options in place on your site. Now might be the ideal time to consider modernising and including options to adapt to shifting customer need, such as a focus on cashless alternatives. Not only does this provide visitors to your site with more flexible ways to pay, but it can also enable a boost to your parking revenues by allowing more people to make use of your site. In some cases, this approach has seen some sites generate as much as a 40% increase in parking revenue. You can find out more about revitalising the payment options on your site in our blog How do you improve payment compliance? Getting ready for the future Evolving your parking helps get your site ready for whatever ‘the new normal’ may be. Contactless and virtual payment options help to maintain social distancing and reduce unnecessary queues. You might even adopt newer services, such as ANPR powered click & collect. ANPR cameras notify staff when a customer with a pending order has arrived. This helps streamline their visit and improves space turnover on your car park which means more customers through your door, less congestion on-site, reduced queues in-store, and gives staff more time to support other customers. Your car park should be a flexible space that allows you to adapt to shifting and changing requirements. Doing so allows you to capitalise on available opportunities and stay one step ahead of your competition. How can we help? When your car park is quiet, that shouldn’t mean it is at a standstill. There are ways to capitalise on those quieter periods and turn them to your advantage. We work with you, combining our expertise and versatile services to create a parking management solution tailored to the needs of your site. From reducing abuse and boosting revenue to providing the tools to help your business adapt to change and turn quieter car parks into an opportunity to thrive. Car park management There are ways to capitalise on those quieter periods and turn them to your advantage. Find out more Read more on our blog Everything you need to know before sending something out to tender For those operations managers and business owners of SMEs in need of advice, this introductory guide will seek to provide... Read more How does a paid parking app help your visitors? Paid parking is an invaluable resource for many businesses, giving them access to a powerful source of revenue. The easiest... Read more How to get your car park ready for 2025 Parking has massively evolved over the last 12 months, from new ways of supporting customers to new legislation that car... Read more
