Key Trends in Airport Parking: The Rise of Online Bookings and Customer Data

As airports adapt to meet the evolving needs of today’s travellers, airport parking is important as both a significant revenue source and a critical element of the passenger journey. As airport customers’ first and last touchpoint, parking plays a pivotal role in shaping passenger satisfaction. 

An increasingly common feature of airport parking is online booking tools, which now account for a growing share of bookings, particularly for long-stay parking. A recent white paper, sponsored by CAVU in partnership with Mercurius Group, delves into how these tools drive growth and innovation within airport parking portfolios – focusing on the emerging markets of Australia and New Zealand.  

From offering travellers peace of mind to enabling advanced loyalty programs, online car park booking is becoming an important tool. 

This article highlights key insights from the white paper, exploring the trends and opportunities that are reshaping airport operations and enhancing customer engagement. 

How Online Booking Tools are Influencing Car Parking   

Online booking tools are an increasingly common product feature within airport car parking portfolios. At the time of press, 16 airports, including all airports in the region with 4mpax or more, offered an online booking tool. 

The smallest regional airports with online booking tools are Palmerston North and Mackay Airport, with less than 1m pax.  

Online booking accounts for an increasingly large portion of airport bookings, particularly in the longer stay market, where they can make up over 90% of the revenue share. By way of example, 97% of Brisbane Airport’s parking stays of 8 days or more are booked online.  

Short-term parking continues to be dominated by drive-up revenue. In part, this reflects customer behaviour, with the meet and greet market generally less pre-planned and reduced timing uncertainty for ‘on-demand’ pickups. Also, not all airports offer pre-booking for short stays (e.g. Perth Airport where there is no facility to book online stays of less than 2 hours).  

Airports within the region strongly promote online bookings, with passengers typically incentivised (through lower pricing) to use them. Promotional marketing also highlights the guarantee of parking availability and certainty on pricing.

Other Growth Opportunities  

Customer Relationships  

In most instances, car parking is the only commercial activity where an airport has a direct relationship with the customer, with most other forms of commercial activity—car rental, taxi/rideshare, retail—provided by third parties.  

Outside of direct passenger growth, key growth opportunities supported with online car parking include:  

Cross Promotions

The growing consumer use of online booking tools provides ongoing opportunities to build relationships, drive revenue and unlock a powerful data source for customer insights.  

Cross-promotional activity can leverage multiple aspects of the commercial portfolio, including parking upgrades, retail offers, or lounge access deals. It can also extend to additional third-party products such as insurance and car rental. The opportunities are as wide and varied as the imagination, booking tools, commercial relationships, and business cases allow.  

Loyalty Programmes 

With a direct customer relationship comes the ability to develop loyalty programmes. Auckland Airport provides a good example of how an airport can offer its online parking customers and retail customers access to a loyalty programme.  

Data Insights

Car parking operations provide a rich source of customer data with multiple data inputs, depth and detail. Beyond the opportunity to drive car parking revenue growth, this data provides insights to help unlock opportunities across an airport’s other commercial businesses:  

Transactional Data

At the highest level, each car park user creates a data footprint on products used, length of stay and transaction value:  

• Products used. Understanding parking product demand can provide insights into different customer segments. These insights can be used to grow other commercial revenues, such as retail and commercial product development, targeted advertising campaigns by media concessions and aviation development. 

• The length of stay in car parks provides insights into outbound passengers’ travel length. These insights can be valuable to aviation development teams, retail marketing initiatives, and targeted advertising campaigns by media concessions. 

Online Booking Data

Online booking portals typically collect customer names, contact details, and residential location details, allowing customers to opt into receiving promotional offers.

This data can be used for:  

• Cross-selling other commercial products such as F&B, retail and lounge products; 

• Data insights into repeat visitors for targeted promotions and communications; and 

• Data insights on passenger catchment areas. 

Credit Card Data

The increased use of credit cards for payments, both drive-up and online, unlocks the opportunity to work with credit card companies who, for a fee, can provide rich insights into airport parking customers, including:

• Demographic data; 

• Related purchasing habits; and 

• Broad residential data. 

LPR Data 

Whilst legislation limits the ability to obtain driver data, LPR data gives insights into repeat users and travel patterns.

Unleash the Full Potential of Airport Car Parking with propel™ 

Airport car parking is more than just a service—it’s a strategic asset with the power to boost customer satisfaction and drive significant revenue growth. 

Download the full white paper to discover how airports optimise their parking operations to enhance the passenger experience and achieve commercial success.

propel™, our purpose-built platform, takes airport parking to the next level. Streamline the booking process, unlock new revenue opportunities, and simplify operations with ease. 

Book a demo today and unlock the full potential of your airport parking strategy.