Editorial
Dear Readers,
At APCOA, we are continuously working on making parking as comfortable as possible for our customers. What is required to accomplish this goal in today's world are two decisive factors: A highly developed service culture and the use of digital technologies.
In parking space management at Berlin-Schönefeld airport, APCOA shows how both sides have to work together. The customer’s journey often begins when they park their vehicle at the airport – and they expect high quality service. They want a fast, simple and comfortable parking experience. Digital solutions are creating new possibilities, including online reservation. In this newsletter, you will find out what else is important in airport parking management.
APCOA is also exploiting the advantages of modern technology to provide lighting in its parking facilities. Thanks to modern LEDs, we can save around 21 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in Germany alone by 2020.
Your Philippe Op de Beeck
Market Report
Berlin-Schönefeld: APCOA introduces a new booking system
APCOA is delivering innovative parking space management, including at Berlin-Schönefeld airport. A new booking system has been rolled out, enabling the operator to quickly introduce new tariffs and update fees, while a reporting tool provides a real time overview of the impact of any changes. This has delivered many new opportunities for revenue management.
An extensive list of tools is available in APCOA's tariff optimization toolbox, including dynamic tariff adjustments for online bookings at peak periods, which can significantly boost revenues. It is also possible to integrate parking tariffs into loyalty programs. The impact of any tariff adjustments can also be assessed using a tariff optimization simulator.
INTERVIEW
Customer satisfaction and CO2 savings speak for a professional traffic- and parking management
Frank van der Sant, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of APCOA knows that operators of airport parking facilities face a series of very unique challenges. A future-oriented approach to car park management means that they can master these challenges.
Why do airports, in particular, need active parking facility management?
Professional traffic and parking management always plays a crucial role at heavily frequented locations – including airports. This is especially true when we consider the parking experience from our customers’ perspective. Passengers flying with budget airlines often have to pay more for their parking than they do for their flights. It is therefore clear that the parking experience we provide needs to offer our customers the highest standards of convenience and speed. Parking management has to benefit passengers as much as it does the airport’s operator.
What do airport operators want?
Parking is one of an airport’s major sources of non-aviation revenue and generates a reliable income stream. It is crucial that we are able to offer convenient parking, together with major environmental benefits. After all, an airport’s on-site parking facilities have to compete with unregulated parking outside the airport’s grounds. In addition, the environmental targets set by politicians mean that more and more air passengers are encouraged to travel to airports on public transport.
How can airport operators counter this political pressure?
They can show that they are taking environmental issues seriously and proactively develop solutions to reduce CO2 emissions. For instance, we have introduced an RFID-based registration system at Arlanda-Airport in Stockholm, which monitors real-time CO2 emissions from every vehicle in the taxi lane. Taxis that emit less CO2 are given priority in the taxi queue. This approach means that CO2 emissions determine how quickly a taxi is ready to accept new passengers. This is a powerful incentive and encourages taxi operators to switch to lower-emission vehicles. The proportion of environmentally-friendly taxis at Arlanda-Airport rose from 16 percent in 2009 to 84 percent in 2014.
Are there any other major issues at airports?
Yes, many airports were designed and built at a time when current and future mobility trends, such as eMobility and self-driving vehicles, were not even pipe dreams. As a result, the infrastructure we will need to manage traffic and parking in future is often lacking. We will need drop-off zones for self-driving cars, where passengers can take their time to enter and exit vehicles with their luggage without blocking roads for other traffic. This is not possible in existing airport access roads. However, there are often limits to what can be achieved by adapting existing infrastructure – especially as airports don’t want any disruption to their regular service.
Do you have a ready-made solution?
The advent and adoption of self-driving vehicles creates a number of challenges for parking facility operators, but it also presents a host of exciting opportunities. We have developed considerable expertise in converting ground floor areas of parking facilities into drop-off zones and manage traffic flow in these areas.
NEWS
APCOA embraces LEDs
LED lighting consumes six times less energy than conventional lighting, which is not only good for the environment, but also for the bank account. The same applies to car parks, as demonstrated by APCOA in the Riem Arcaden in Munich. By switching light sources, energy consumption has been cut by 57 percent. APCOA replaced 3,900 fluorescent tubes with Master LEDtubes in the shopping centre’s car park last year. This alternative to conventional T8 fluorescent tubes, based on LED technology, can easily be integrated into existing structures. APCOA technicians needed four weeks to exchange all the tubes. The LEDs provide the car park with even and glare-free illumination for a total of 50,000 hours – with constant lighting intensity and light colour, without flicker or hum. Switching to LEDs in all of APCOA’s German parking facilities will save 21 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020 in Germany alone.
