PARKEX 2010
By Graham Parker | Published: 01 March, 2011
This year’s Parkex saw the typical range of quality product launches and new innovation. One area of heightened focus was the relationship between parking and retail. Having been a hot topic of discussion for years, parking companies are finally turning ideas and research into enhanced technology and marketable products.
APT Skidata
According to Nigel Young of APT Skidata, the recession is prompting centre owners to see car parks as a vital aspect of their business: “If owners and managers want to run their car parks as a business model, then we’ll happily help them do that.”
What with the recession and its impact on footfall and spend, landlords are fighting to attract people who stay at home or shop online to save money. It’s this renewed focus that Young wants replicated in the handling of car parks.
“Centres are really trying to boost loyalty in shoppers. I’m always staggered by the amount of money they put towards increasing footfall, spend and rates in the centre itself. Where is this level of investment in the car park?”
However, Young puts the recent improvements in parking systems down to the constant innovation occurring in shopping centres. “The shopping centre market has been the most proactive in embracing technology to increase footfall and branding. It’s this philosophy that has been driving car parks to become more technologically minded,” he argues.
With major banks such as Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland rolling out contactless credit and debit cards, this is exactly the kind of technology that Young has in mind. By integrating ‘Wave and Pay’ into APT Skidata’s car park payment system, drivers can simply wave their cards in front of the reader as they enter a car park.
“The credit or debit card becomes your unique identifier,” explains Young. “If you’re a loyal member of a particular shopping centre, you can start an account by entering your details online so the system will recognise you as you wave your card on entry. You’d never have to use a ticket, which reduces overheads, lowers congestion, and decreases crime because people won’t need to carry cash on them.”
Building on the marketing and customer loyalty so vital to shopping centres, APT Skidata’s ticket processing system also displays the driver’s name when they enter a car park. “They are welcomed by name at the barriers, so people go in and out with a personal message. It makes you feel special.”
The website also enables drivers to use their number plate as their unique identifier, with Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) employed at the entry barrier. But the future of car park payment, in Young’s opinion, lies in the mobile phone. After all, everybody has one: there are more mobile phones currently in circulation than credit or debit cards.
Rather than using licence plates or waving a debit card, drivers can use their mobile phone as a parking ticket. After the proper details are inputted online, a phone enabled with NFC (Near Field Communication) can be read by the system to allow the driver entry.
At the end of the month, a bill is sent out to each driver based on their usage. “The parking charges would be at a reduced rate,” says Young, with another nod towards customer loyalty, “and once someone has signed up online, we get all their details and can offer targeted promotions like free parking after three next Thursday. It can be used as a proper business tool.”
Parkeon / Parking Applications
Parkeon is another leading company working to establish car parks as business models alongside adjoining shopping centres. Having introduced “Wave and Pay” to Westminster City Council’s car parks, Parkeon has come up with the technology to specifically target individual shoppers.
The barrier-less solution, called ParkingPal, combines Parking Applications’ Veri-Park control system with the Parkeon Strada pay-and-display terminal. Integrating the two solutions has created a new approach to pay-on-foot, with advanced technology in the form of touch screens and contactless payment.
On entering a car park, images of each car and its registration plate are captured and transmitted via a network to the payment terminal. The images are then displayed on the full colour touch screen, and drivers can scroll down to find their own car. After selecting their vehicle, they can pay for parking either on arrival or on departure. Because all activity is logged by the system, no ticket is issued. “It saves drivers the hassle of going back to their car with the ticket, and no manual enforcement is required because it’s all there on the system,” says Danny Hassett, Parkeon’s UK parking director.
As with many up-to-date parking systems, drivers have a choice of payment methods. Contactless card and non-subscribe mobile phone payments are fully integrated, and paper receipts are issued so that users can keep a record of their costs.
Everything is centred around making the driver’s life as easy as possible, supporting the idea that car parks can establish consumer loyalty. “Retail property owners have got to review parking as part and parcel of their business approach,” stresses David Barrington, executive director of Parking Applications.
“The car park is the first and last thing people see when they visit a shopping centre. In the past it’s been tagged on to the side; now it has to become integral.”
Tied into this is the removal of barriers. According to Barrington, barriers at the entrance to a car park “give the impression that we don’t want people to come in”. Just as eliminating tickets reduces hassle for drivers, so a barrier-less system allows people to enter any car park without having to wait in a queue. And taking both tickets and barriers out of the equation will reduce the equipment infrastructure, resulting in lower capital, installation, maintenance and running costs.
But arguably the greatest appeal for shopping centres lies in ParkingPal’s marketing potential. Frequent users can set up an online account with Parkeon enabling them to come and go without paying for individual stays. Once someone enters their details, the system can capture a range of information about that user.
“Not only will we know when they arrived and how long they stayed, but we can communicate with them. It’s a channel through which we can target people,” says Barrington. All promotions being held inside a shopping centre will be listed on the touch screen at the payment terminal, alongside a car finder application.
And the promotional possibilities for shopping centre car parks are endless. “The centre could run a special offer at a certain restaurant between 5pm and 6pm. If supplies ran low, they could immediately stop the promotion.”
Another idea is for retailers or centres to set up a loyalty scheme. “If someone was a frequent visitor to a centre, then they might have reduced parking charges or free parking,” suggests Barrington. “But their data would still be captured, making it easier to target them with specific marketing campaigns.”
Both Hassett and Barrington understand how important it is for landlords to be in control of the promotions and of parking management in general. As Barrington puts it: “Asset owners see it as a very useful channel, but they want to manage that channel. They need to have a handle on everything. So landlords have the power to stop and start any campaign whenever they like.
ParkingPal also puts the method of enforcement in the hands of centre owners. According to a study of non-compliances in car parks, over half of the drivers investigated had paid for their parking but hadn’t paid enough.
“This is very different to someone who didn’t want to pay in the first place,” says Barrington, who points out that many people pay on entry to the car park and simply get held up. “Centres are always holding promotions that encourage shoppers to stay a bit longer. Why penalise someone for staying in the centre, when that is exactly what every landlord should want?”
So ParkingPal allows the client to choose a soft enforcement method, where a letter might be sent out to give drivers a chance to repay the money without further penalty.
Despite the flexibility of ParkingPal, Barrington recognises that pick up among retail property owners might take time. “That’s why we offer layers of implementation, giving clients the chance to opt in or out or various services. After they have installed it, centre owners will see the value of having marketing and footfall statistics to such a high level,” he says.
Town and City Parking
Another product launched at Parkex was RepNet – a new parking analysis tool supplied by Town and City Parking (TCP). It relies on a sensor system to relay detailed, time specific information of occupancy, average length of stay, and the way in which the car park is being used in any given period.
“All the people we’ve shown from retail love it,” claims TCP managing director, Bernie Dickson. This explains why 14 Sainsbury’s sites in the UK have already picked it up, with a further run of supermarkets in the pipeline. Asda at Trafford Park, which lies in close proximity to Manchester’s Trafford Centre, goes live from the middle of March.
“It’s great for retailers because they all want to gather data on footfall. This will give them detailed information on exactly what is happening: how long shoppers are staying; whereabouts they generally park; and whether the car park is being abused.” Abuse might occur if people park in a shopping centre car park, only to get on a bus into town or shop in a nearby supermarket. Landlords need to be aware of this kind of misuse because their own customers might be unable to find a space as a result.
Lauded as a revolutionary product that in Dickson’s words will “bring parking into the 21st century”, what is it about RepNet that stands it out from other sensor-based products? “Sensors have been out there for a while, but other products just don’t give off the same level of information. We’ve had geniuses working on this from the Swedish company Metereye and they have it off to a fine art.”
As there is a sensor in each parking space, RepNet can produce a heat map for landlords and managing agents showing areas most used by shoppers.
“You can research into the history of individual spaces to see how many people have used them over a period of time. If a retail park had large areas of a car park being underutilised, they might want to put in a coffee shop or kiosk to up the value of the scheme as a whole,” Dickson explains.
“Centre managers love the heat map because it’s a visual representation of how trade is picking up. They can immediately see how many shoppers are arriving at the centre and how long they’re staying. Landlords and managers can watch in real time, or they can watch it back at a faster speed to see what happened overnight when they weren’t around.”
Another benefit is forward planning. If centres have a particularly busy period, like weekends or Christmas holidays, managers can look at the report to see whether more marshalling should be in place in the future, and whereabouts to position attendants.
The flow of traffic around the car park can be assessed by looking at preferred parking spots and where the average shopper parks in relation to the shopping centre and car park exits.
“A further advantage is the ability to measure the efficiency of parking attendants,” adds Dickson. “It can often be the case that guys in yellow jackets wander aimlessly around a car park with no particular focus.
“But now these attendants will have hand-held devices showing them in real time which areas need overseeing. Managers, who can view the data in their offices or at home via the internet, can then plan where attendants should be placed and even what time they need to come in.”
UK Parking Control
Linking the car park owners to attendants on the ground is something that UK Parking Control (UKPC) has also been dealing with in the recently launched Total Parking Management (TPM). The concept behind TPM was based on client feedback and a desire to enhance the image of parking enforcement to both clients and consumers.
“We are always looking at ways to improve the services that we provide to our clients and add value in a market that can be at times deemed unfair and unrelenting,” explains UKPC managing director Rupert Williams.
Wardens are equipped with a mobile phone on-screen ticketing PDA which produces time stamped pictures of offending vehicles. ANPR captures all vehicle information on arrival and departure, while the warden is able to ensure all cars are parked within the client’s site regulations. Offences such as overstays can be pinpointed and dealt with far quicker because information on each car is stored and made readily available to the wardens, without the need for parking permits.
This system’s main advantage, according to Williams, is the combination of ANPR technology with the personal touch of a patrolling warden. “Clients want the reassurance of a professional warden onsite, but also wish to utilise the benefits that ANPR can bring as an additional security and indeed marketing benefit,” he stresses.
While many parking systems make use of both technology and people, the key to TPM’s success is proper integration of the two. Every level of management, from centre owner to parking attendant, has access to real time information on parking offenders. Once an offender has been identified, the PDA immediately uploads the time-stamped picture and parking ticket to the client extranet as well as the park change facility, making them available to both the client and the offender.
Williams notes that types of parking offence have traditionally been dealt with as separate issues demanding different types of control and enforcement. With TCP, he wants to give wardens overarching control over every type of offender with the use of one efficient device. “Retail parks and shopping centres all experience varying parking control issues, from being able to protect their disabled bays to vehicles overstaying the time limit,” he explains.
“Historically it has been feasible to support and provide resolution for most of these issues. With TPM we are able to provide a total solution that benefits both the client and, in turn, the visitors. This is supplemented with a variety of reporting facilities which can be bespoke to the client’s needs and requirements.”
Added to the identification of offenders, managers are able to capture the frequency of offences committed as well as general data on car park users. And landlords and managers are able to monitor wardens by checking how much time they spend in a given location via GPS.
Despite a mix of different concepts and uses, new products are making a splash in the parking world by sharing passion and innovation with the retail sector. Opening up channels of communication between landlord, attendant and shopper; giving centre owners flexibility in how they deal with parking offenders; and capturing detailed information for management reports are all ideally suited to the shopping centre industry.
Incorporating car parks into the business model is a valid move for landlords, but the question is will they make it?
