San Diego Completes Tech Overhaul of Airport Parking
The San Diego International Airport has upgraded to a frictionless parking system that promises to increase its parking revenue.
Skidata affiliate Sentry Control Systems oversaw the project—an approximately $6 million investment—focusing first on finding parking solutions for unregistered users. “Our focus really started with the unregistered users. Airports have always deployed license plate recognition technology as a way to play defense and protect their revenue stream, not to enhance the parking experience or reduce the friction of the parking experience,” Lester Mascon, EVP of Sentry Control Systems, tells GlobeSt.com. “We added license plate recognition to enhance the experience, which meant that when someone shows up in the exit lane, the barrier will open if they didn’t owe anything. A big part of that was adding pay-on-foot features so that they could take advantage of that feature, and we added a mobile pay feature to increase the chances that they show up in the exit lane with no fee due.”
With this new infrastructure, the company was also able to accommodate registered users more efficiently. It partnered with a company to provide a reservation option and loyalty program that will ultimately help to boost parking garage revenue. “The reservation system allows people to make a parking reservation in advance, giving them a time window in which they can enter using license plate recognition and then they are able to leave within a certain period of time,” explains Mascon. “Then, there is loyalty, which gives users some form of credential and people can come and go from the airport at will and you are automatically charged for your use.”
In addition to better accommodating users in and out of the parking lot, the new system includes guidance cameras to help drivers locate parking spaces within the garage. “They also added a camera guidance system, so at every decision point, the car park tells you where there are available spaces,” says Mascon. “That really improves the customer experience, especially as the garage gets closer to full.” Altogether the parking system is something akin to what you might see in a high-end retail center parking garage, not an airport.
This system had two functions. It both enhanced the consumer experience in the garage, helping to increase users and ultimately revenue, and it contributed to San Diego’s ultimate vision of creating a leading smart city. “When you put all of this together, we are trying to reduce the amount of friction that someone has associated with the terminal,” says Mascon. “The city was intent on adding as smart and frictionless as possible for the end users.”
San Diego isn’t the only city looking at implementing frictionless technology packages in the parking garage. Airports are exceedingly losing revenue to ride-sharing services and off-site parking garage options that are easier to use and less crowded than airport garages. “Because an airport typically isn’t doing anything special, off-airport parking has really sprung up,” says Mascon. “That has taken a chunk out of the airport revenue. Every single airport that we are talking to is seeing degradation in their parking revenue. Once you start to layer in ride sharing services, now there is a significant reduction in revenue at the airport. Airports have had to respond.”