Editorial
Dear Reader,
One of APCOA's key strengths has always been the way we customise our parking solutions to the specific requirements of individual customer segments. We already offer a large number of bespoke services for city centres and shopping malls, airports and train stations, hospitals, event venues and universities. And, as digitalisation opens up new technical possibilities, we now have a vast array of new tools to further optimise our parking management processes and create innovative services for companies and end users.
The secret to success in our industry is to fully understand the needs of our different target groups. It is therefore essential to have in-depth knowledge of the requirements in each of our customer’s segments. A perfect example of this is the trade fair, convention and event segment, which requires robust solutions to manage the high volume of traffic at peak times to avoid delays or traffic jams. In this newsletter we present one best practice case study – our parking management system for the world's largest construction machinery trade fair, bauma, in Munich.
As part of APCOA’s digital transformation, we have also prioritised a new openness to cooperation. The growing importance of partnerships is a paradigm shift, driven to a large extent by the digital economy. This is a paradigm shift that APCOA is embracing, as demonstrated by our recent collaboration with the data specialist INRIX, which we also report on in this newsletter.
Finally, we hope to meet many of you at Expo Real in Munich from October 4 to 6. As in previous years, APCOA has its own stand (Hall C1, Stand 121). If you are visiting this important industry get-together, please feel free to come and visit us!
Until then, enjoy the latest edition of our newsletter!
Your Philippe Op de Beeck
Market Report
Trade fairs, convention and event centres with potential
One of APCOA’s fastest-growing business segments is the management of parking at trade fairs, convention and event centres. And the segment offers considerable potential for further growth. Large-scale events continue to gain in popularity. With very specific requirements, such as managing high volumes of traffic at peak times, professional parking space management is essential if visitors are to park quickly and safely. APCOA’s extensive track-record at a host of different locations demonstrates that it has the appropriate solutions and expertise in this field. One such example is Munich’s bauma, the world's leading trade fair for construction, building materials, mining machinery, construction vehicles and construction equipment. Although it is a trade fair, bauma is actually open to everyone. Last year, bauma once again posted record figures. Within a single week, the fair’s 3,425 exhibitors welcomed almost 600,000 visitors to the 605,000 square metres of exhibition space. The peak time for journeys to the New Munich Trade Fair Centre is the two hours before the trade fair centre opens its doors to visitors – exactly the same time as Munich’s regular morning rush hour. In order to cope with this rush, APCOA optimised space in the multi-storey car park to increase the number of available parking spaces from 4,600 to 5,000. In addition, APCOA also provided 18 additional parking areas, accommodating an extra 18,000 vehicles. APCOA had more than 260 trained employees on-site to ensure that traffic flows moved quickly and consistently, and to manage parking and billing. Hostesses were also on-hand to provide customer support at the trade show. Thanks to these measures, and the processes we tailored to the site’s specific conditions, we were able to offer visitors a smooth parking experience, and a good start and end to their time at the trade show. For APCOA, this meant that in just one week we organised the parking of 116,000 cars and 3,000 buses. Even at peak times of up to 9,000 vehicles per hour, no traffic backed up to the motorway or surrounding arterial roads. In addition to the New Munich Trade Fair Centre, APCOA also manages parking areas at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Wembley Stadium in Great Britain, the Fiera Milano in Italy, the Globe Arenas in Stockholm, which includes the Ericsson Globe and the Tele2 Arena, along with a host of other major event venues and shopping centres.
Partnership
Making it easy to find a parking space: APCOA and INRIX create the most comprehensive parking space database in Europe
APCOA, the leading car park operator in Europe, and INRIX, provider of the world's largest car park database, have agreed to work together to share parking data. APCOA will contribute data from the 1.4 million parking spaces it manages at more than 9,000 locations in 12 European countries. This information flows directly into INRIX's off-street parking service and makes parking easier and more convenient than ever before for European drivers. The INRIX global database contains parking space data from 100,000 locations in 8,700 cities in more than 100 countries. This database contains the most comprehensive pool of parking information in Europe. Thanks to modern in-car information systems, automobile manufacturers can make the data available to car drivers. They can use their navigation systems to quickly and easily guide them to the nearest parking space. This has advantages not only for car drivers, but also for cities and municipalities. Drivers searching for parking spaces continue to account for about one-third of the traffic volume along with the corresponding inner-city emissions caused by private vehicles. This new partnership will enable APCOA, Europe's leading car park operator, to strengthen its relationships with its parking customers. “We have teamed up with INRIX to improve our digital services and help our customers search for parking spaces. This benefits not only drivers, but also cities and the environment,” says Philippe Op de Beeck, CEO of APCOA Parking Group. “Big Data is having a growing influence on mobility and parking management, and this partnership helps us make parking easier and more user-friendly.” The parking management expert knows that Big Data's influence on mobility and parking management is increasing. Thus the development of information-based customer-centric services for drivers is APCOA's top priority.
News
APCOA presence at Expo Real with own stand
APCOA once again has its own stand (Hall C1, Booth 121) at the Expo Real real estate trade fair from October 4-6 in Munich. There is plenty to report: In particular, digitalisation has a bearing on many of the parking-related topics, which are of great importance for APCOA. Car parks are increasingly becoming hubs for mobility services. As Europe's leading car park operator, APCOA has already begun to capitalise on the opportunities this creates. Parking facilities are one of the most important interfaces to end users, which enables car park operators in the digital age to create new worlds of experience through customer-centric and innovative services. Trends such as car sharing, electromobility and autonomous driving are turning multi-storey car parks into mobility hubs that can offer numerous personalised services. APCOA is already intensively involved in these areas, and has joined various cooperation networks to help set the technological and organisational agenda for future-oriented mobility solutions.
