Parking Facilities

The service industry is made up of multiple areas that all should have a common goal in common. Providing the best service possible to consumers that will leave them with a memorable experience and will leave them thinking how and when they can return to relive that experience. When we think of hospitality the first thought that comes to mind is hotels, entertainment venues and restaurants. All these also share one major factor that affects almost every single City in the world. Parking. We as parking professionals serve as the first and last experience a consumer has when they visit these types of locations. Providing a hospitable and welcoming experience is key to ensuring a guest experience gets off on the right foot. I was once asked if an individual with a hospitality degree and years of experience in the hotel industry can successfully transition into the parking industry? My answer to that question was an emphatic yes. It’s experiences that tailors an individual to offer a warm welcome with the ability to lead with yes. All the attributes that every parking professional should have in my opinion. Forbes training standards are an excellent resource for our industry leaders to promote with front line staff and operations teams on this topic. Elvis Reyes, CAPP, is the General Manager for The Car Park. Elvis can be reached at ereyes@thecarpark.com. With electric vehicles come batteries - lots and lots of batteries. Research and development have been able to extend the life of these batteries, but ultimately these storage devices will continue to have a limited useful life for the foreseeable future. How many batteries are we talking about? An article in Pocket predicts "12M tons of lithium-ion batteries are expected to retire between now and 2030." What can be done with this tsunami of batteries that are past their initial useful life? The most predictable answer is recycling. However, there is another school of thought proposing that a second life as storage cells may actually be the better answer for society and for the environment. It would be interesting to see some of these batteries resurrected to store solar energy in meters or charging stations at the curb, in lots, or in parking decks. From an initial life in mobility to a second life in parking, it is an innovative idea worth considering. Leslie L. Stone, CAPP is the Director of Customer Success for WeDriveU. Leslie can be reached at leslie.stone@wedriveu.com.

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Zevtron Announces Partnership with Parking Concepts Inc. (PCI) to Offer Breeze EV Charging Infrastructure

Here is the first question that needs to be answered: Who is your audience?  Are they visitors, commuters, students, downtown business owners and shoppers, or large companies. The more ways you provide for a parker to pay for your services the better customer service experience they will have?  Is the service I want to offer going to lead to confusion for my audience? If you add a feature or application to your current parking services will it be adopted and used frequently by your audience? Make sure that whatever service(s) you choose to adopt it will be received well by the audience you are providing these services for.  This would include pay on foot stations, parking meters, pay by phone application, and garage parking just to name a few. You need to know is your department’s financial goals. Is it to break even or to make money?  Make sure you understand your role, responsibility, and authority level when managing large revenues or changing the way you receive more revenue for your department.  Do your parking research. If you are signing a contract or buying equipment, you will need have involvement from purchasing and legal at the very beginning. There are a lot of items that get left out or over looked in a contract if you are not sure what to look for.   Research, research, research here are few guiding tools Ask as many questions with other parking professionals Demo the product for your others within your organization that will be effected if you add the service Visit a another parking operation that uses the product you are interested in Have the sales representative walk you through the customer’s experience, asked about maintenance, asked about any fees that are expected outside the contract. If you don’t ask the questions the right way (because you are not educated on the services enough) you won’t get the right answers you were seeking to make a good financial decision.  To be a good steward of the tax payer’s dollars, university dollars, airport dollars, you need to do your research!  Be prepared, be honest about what you don’t know and seek to understand all facts to make sure that you are improving the customer’s experience and meeting your financial goals! Michelle L. Wahl, CAPP, is the Parking Services Director for the City of Bloomington, IN. Michelle can be reached at michelle.wahl@bloomington.in.gov.

Lessons from a Rising Landmark

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