Breaking down data silos: How car parks and airports can unlock commercial growth

For car park operators and airports, data has become the foundation of commercial success. Yet despite collecting vast amounts of information across parking systems, booking platforms, payment gateways, and passenger touchpoints, many organisations find themselves unable to use this data effectively. 

The culprit? Data silos. 

When critical business information becomes trapped in disconnected systems, you’re not just facing a technical challenge. You’re limiting your ability to make informed pricing decisions, optimise capacity, understand customer behaviour, and ultimately maximise revenue. 

In this article, we’ll explore what data silos are, why they’re particularly problematic for car park and airport operations, and how you can overcome them to drive sustainable commercial growth.

What are data silos? 

Data silos are isolated pieces of information that exist within separate systems, departments, or platforms. This prevents seamless data sharing across your organisation. In simple terms, it’s when different parts of your business hold valuable data that others cannot easily access or use. 

For car park operators and airports, data silos commonly emerge between: 

• Parking management systems and revenue platforms 

• Online booking engines and on-site payment terminals 

• Customer relationship management tools and operational databases 

• Marketing analytics and sales reporting systems 

• Multiple car park locations operating independently 

When these systems fail to communicate effectively, you end up with fragmented datasets that tell incomplete stories. For instance, your parking operations team might see capacity trends, whilst your commercial team works with entirely different booking data, and your marketing department operates with a third set of customer insights. 

The result is an organisation rich in data but poor in actionable intelligence.

What causes data silos in car park and airport operations? 

Understanding why data silos develop is the first step towards eliminating them. In the car park and airport sectors, several factors contribute to fragmented data environments: 

Legacy infrastructure and complex systems 

Many car parks and airports operate with a patchwork of systems built up over years, sometimes decades. You might have inherited older parking management software, added modern booking platforms, integrated third-party payment processors, and used various analytics tools along the way. 

Each system was likely introduced to solve a specific problem at a particular time, often without consideration for how it would integrate with existing infrastructure. Such complications with technical aspects of connecting disparate systems with different data formats, APIs, and architectures create barriers to active information sharing. 

Organisational structure and departmental ownership 

Airport and car park operations typically involve multiple stakeholders with distinct responsibilities. Operations teams focus on capacity management and vehicle flow, commercial teams concentrate on pricing and revenue optimisation, while marketing departments track customer acquisition and retention. 

When different departments own different systems and datasets, information naturally becomes siloed. Teams may view their data as proprietary to their function rather than as an enterprise asset that should be shared across the organisation. 

Rapid growth and expansion 

As car park portfolios expand or airports add new terminals and facilities, data silos often multiply. Each new location or expansion might introduce additional systems without proper integration planning. 

Acquisitions can be particularly problematic. When one car park operator acquires another, merging incompatible systems and data structures becomes a significant challenge that many organisations defer, meaning no places are put in place to eradicate the data silos. 

Resource constraints 

Integrating systems and breaking down data silos requires investment in technology, expertise, and time. Many organisations struggle to justify the upfront costs, particularly when existing systems appear to “work” in isolation, even if they prevent optimal decision-making. 

The lack of in-house data engineering capabilities can also mean organisations rely on external vendors for each system, with limited ability to create unified data architectures. 

How do data silos impact commercial performance? 

Regardless of the cause, data silos directly impact your bottom line and competitive position. 

Here’s how fragmented data hinders commercial performance in the parking and airport sectors: 

Suboptimal pricing strategies 

Dynamic pricing is crucial for maximising car park and airport parking revenue. However, effective pricing requires comprehensive data about historical demand patterns, competitor pricing, seasonal variations, local events, flight schedules, and customer behaviour. 

When this information lives in separate systems, you can’t develop sophisticated pricing models. You might be underpricing during peak demand periods or overpricing when you need to drive volume, missing significant revenue opportunities either way. 

Without integrated data, you’re essentially pricing blind, relying on outdated rules or gut instinct rather than evidence-based strategies informed by complete market intelligence. 

Inefficient capacity management 

Data silos prevent real-time visibility across your entire parking inventory. If your booking system doesn’t communicate effectively with your access control systems, you risk overbooking or underutilising capacity. 

For airports managing multiple car parks across different terminals and both on-site and off-site locations, fragmented data makes it nearly impossible to optimise inventory allocation. You might have empty spaces in one location whilst turning away customers at another, purely because you lack integrated capacity insights. 

Missed cross-selling and upselling opportunities 

Modern passengers expect seamless travel experiences and value convenience. They’re willing to pay for additional services like lounge access, fast-track security,  or premium parking locations. 

However, if your parking booking data sits separately from your ancillary product systems, you can’t effectively offer complementary services at the right moments in the customer journey. These missed cross-selling opportunities represent substantial foregone revenue, particularly when you consider the lifetime value of repeat customers. 

Incomplete customer understanding 

Understanding your customers is fundamental to commercial success. Which segments are most profitable? What booking patterns predict lifetime value? How do different customer types respond to pricing changes or promotional offers? 

Data silos negatively impact your customer view. Your booking system might know purchase history, your payment gateway holds transaction data, your marketing platform tracks email engagement, and your operational systems record actual usage patterns. None of these provides the complete picture you need to make strategic decisions about customer acquisition, retention, and development. 

Duplicated efforts and operational inefficiency 

When data doesn’t flow freely between systems, teams spend valuable time on manual data reconciliation. Finance teams might manually merge reports from multiple sources. Commercial analysts export data from various platforms into spreadsheets to create unified views. Marketing teams struggle to segment customers effectively without complete profiles. 

This wastes resources that could be better used on strategic initiatives. It also introduces human error into your data, further compromising data quality and the reliability of insights derived from it. 

Slower decision-making 

In dynamic markets, timing matters. Car parks and airports face rapidly changing conditions: unexpected events that drive demand spikes, competitor price changes, seasonal variations, and evolving customer preferences. 

Data silos slow decision-making because stakeholders lack immediate access to comprehensive information. By the time data is manually gathered, consolidated, and analysed, the opportunity may have passed. Your competitors operating with integrated data systems can react faster and capture market advantage. 

Regulatory and compliance risks 

Airports and car parks handle sensitive customer data subject to regulations like GDPR. When customer information is scattered across multiple systems, maintaining consistent security controls, managing data subject access requests, and ensuring compliance becomes significantly more complex and risky. 

Data silos make it difficult to track where customer data resides, who has access to it, and whether it’s being handled appropriately, potentially exposing you to regulatory penalties and reputational damage.

How to break down data silos 

Breaking down data silos requires a strategic approach that addresses both technological and organisational challenges. 

Here’s how car park operators and airports can create unified data environments that drive commercial growth: 

Use integrated ecommerce and revenue management platforms 

The foundation for overcoming data silos is adopting platforms specifically designed to unify your data ecosystem. Purpose-built ecommerce platforms for the parking and airport sectors can serve as central hubs that connect disparate systems and create single sources of truth. 

Modern platforms offer comprehensive functionality that brings together booking management, payment processing, inventory control, pricing optimisation, and analytics in integrated environments. This eliminates the need for multiple disconnected systems whilst providing the advanced capabilities required for sophisticated commercial strategies. 

For example, Propel, our advanced ecommerce platform, gives car park operators and airports complete control over their products, pricing, and data insights. By consolidating booking flows, revenue management tools, and analytics capabilities in one unified system, Propel enables you to make faster, more informed commercial decisions based on comprehensive data. 

Establish robust data governance frameworks 

Technology alone won’t eliminate data silos. You need clear governance frameworks that define how data flows through your organisation, who owns different datasets, and what standards ensure consistency and quality. 

Effective data governance for car parks and airports includes: 

• Defining data ownership and stewardship roles across departments 

• Establishing standardised data formats and definitions organisation-wide 

• Creating clear protocols for data sharing between systems and teams 

• Implementing role-based access controls that balance security with accessibility 

• Developing data quality standards and validation processes 

Governance frameworks should also address compliance requirements, ensuring customer data is handled consistently across all systems whilst maintaining appropriate security controls. 

Paris Bielby, Data Director at CAVU, gave her thoughts on what effective data governance looks like: 

When we talk about data governance, many people immediately think of rules, hard controls, and bureaucracy. Still, the most effective governance frameworks do the opposite: they enable teams to act quickly and confidently. Good governance is about creating clarity and trust, so decision-makers know exactly what data they can use, how to use it, and that it’s reliable. 

At a high level, governance starts with defining clear ownership and accountability for data domains: who owns passenger flow data, who owns retail transaction data, who owns partner performance metrics. Secondly, it’s standardisation, definitions and metadata so everyone is speaking the same language. When teams trust that a metric is consistent across departments, they can make decisions faster because they’re not debating which version of the truth to use. 

Governance also includes policies for privacy, compliance, and security. This protects sensitive passenger data and commercially confidential partner information while still allowing the right people access for business decisions. The key is to automate enforcement where possible and provide frameworks that guide behaviour rather than create bottlenecks. When governance is embedded in processes and tools, it becomes an enabler rather than a barrier. 

In practice, the result is that commercial teams launching a new promotion, or optimising passenger spend, don’t have to wait weeks to get approvals or clarify definitions. They can access trusted data immediately, understand constraints, and act,  which is ultimately what governance should achieve: faster, safer decision-making at scale.

Invest in API-first integration strategies 

Application programming interfaces enable different systems to communicate effectively. Rather than replacing all your existing systems simultaneously, API-first strategies allow you to connect them incrementally, gradually breaking down silos whilst preserving functional tools. 

For car park and airport operations, APIs can connect: 

• Parking management systems with booking platforms 

• Payment gateways with revenue reporting tools 

• Capacity monitoring systems with dynamic pricing engines 

• Customer databases with marketing automation platforms 

• On-site operational systems with ecommerce channels 

Modern ecommerce platforms typically offer extensive API capabilities, making it easier to integrate legacy systems and create unified data flows without wholesale replacement of functional infrastructure. 

Create cross-functional data teams 

Technology and governance frameworks need organisational support. Breaking down data silos requires cultural change that encourages collaboration rather than territorial data ownership. 

Consider establishing cross-functional teams that bring together stakeholders from operations, commercial, marketing, IT, and analytics. These teams can: 

• Identify priority data integration opportunities based on commercial impact 

• Champion data-sharing culture and collaborative decision-making 

• Develop organisation-wide understanding of data assets and their uses 

• Drive adoption of new integrated systems and processes 

• Monitor data quality and identify ongoing integration needs 

Many successful organisations appoint data champions within each department who serve as liaisons between operational teams and central data functions, ensuring information flows effectively whilst maintainingdepartmental expertise. 

Use automation for real-time data synchronisation 

Manual data transfers between systems increase silos and errors. Automated data pipelines ensure information flows seamlessly in real-time, keeping all systems synchronised and providing stakeholders with current insights. 

For car park and airport operations, automation is particularly valuable for: 

• Synchronising availability across booking channels to prevent overbooking 

• Updating pricing in real-time based on demand and competitive intelligence 

• Consolidating revenue data from multiple sources for financial reporting 

• Triggering marketing communications based on booking and usage behaviour 

• Feeding operational data into analytics platforms for immediate visibility 

Modern integration platforms and tools have made automation increasingly accessible, even for organisations without extensive technical resources. 

Prioritise data quality and standardisation 

Integrating systems is only valuable if the underlying data is accurate and consistent. As you break down silos, invest in data quality initiatives that ensure information can be reliably used across your organisation. 

Key data quality practices include: 

• Establishing master data management processes for critical entities like customers and products 

• Implementing validation rules that catch errors at the point of data entry 

• Creating regular data cleansing routines that identify and correct inconsistencies 

• Standardising naming conventions, formats, and classifications across systems 

• Documenting data definitions so stakeholders understand what metrics actually represent 

High-quality, standardised data is the foundation for trustworthy analytics and confident decision-making. 

Build data foundations and drive your commercial growth 

Breaking down data silos isn’t a one-off project. It’s an ongoing commitment to data-driven operations that continuously evolve as your business grows and technology advances. 

The commercial benefits are substantial: better pricing strategies that maximise revenue, efficient capacity utilisation that reduces waste, deeper customer understanding that drives loyalty and lifetime value, faster decision-making that captures competitive advantage, and operational efficiencies that improve margins. 

For car park operators and airports, overcoming data silos means transforming from organisations drowning in disconnected data to agile businesses that leverage comprehensive intelligence to drive sustainable commercial growth. 

Propel, our advanced ecommerce platform provides the technological foundation for eliminating data silos, with integrated booking, pricing, and analytics capabilities designed specifically for parking and airport operations. 

By consolidating your data ecosystem, you gain the insights needed to make confident commercial decisions whilst delivering seamless customer experiences. 

Learn more about Propel > 

Gain expert-led insights with our data webinar  

To dive deeper into building robust data strategies that support commercial growth, join CAVU’s upcoming webinar on 18 March 2026. 

Paris Bielby, Data Director at CAVU and Jamal Karim, Lead Data Engineer at CAVU, will share practical frameworks for assessing your data capabilities, designing cross-ecosystem governance, and creating scalable data foundations that unlock sustainable revenue growth. 

Sign up here >