Airport Parking Reservation Systems and Techniques (2025)
Chapter: Summary
SUMMARY
Airport Parking Reservation Systems and Techniques
Airport parking is an important customer amenity and a principal source of revenue that helps fund the operation and development of airports. In recent years, growing volumes of passenger traffic and increasing competition from a variety of airport access providers have encouraged airports to seek new ways to attract airport parkers and enhance revenues.
One strategy adopted by airports is offering customers parking reservations, providing them with the ability to book a parking space in advance of their flight. To accomplish this, airports use an online booking system (OBS), an internet-based platform that offers the ability to prepay and guarantee a space. The OBS links the reservation to airports’ Parking Access and Revenue Control Systems (PARCSs).
The objective of this synthesis is to document the use of OBSs at U.S. airports, including their benefits, costs, and implementation challenges. It also identifies gaps in existing research and recommendations for future research topics. The report includes findings from:
- A literature review consisting of existing academic research, media coverage, and trade press articles;
- An online survey distributed to 36 airport authorities of varying sizes, with 18 responses summarized (covering 20 airports); and
- Five detailed use case examples, which include material documented from interviews with airport staffs.
Together, the online survey results and detailed use case summaries document that parking reservations have become an integral part of these airports’ parking strategies:
Parking reservation systems enable airport customers to reserve (or “prebook”) their parking at an airport facility, paying in advance for the service. Often, the customer may also receive a discount on the published price of the parking product. For airport staff, parking reservations provide information on the customer, potentially inform more sophisticated pricing of their parking services, and may help manage capacity and balance utilization of their parking facilities. According to the survey responses, most airports tend to make between 10% and 40% of their total parking and valet inventory available for reservations.
Airports experience a variety of OBS implementation issues. These included technology integration issues between the OBS and the airport’s PARCS, entry and exit validation issues for which Quick Response (QR) code or License Plate Recognition (LPR) systems were used, and delays in bringing systems online due to airport management’s concerns with pricing and customer issues. In response, airport staff have employed pilot tests, soft openings, and other operational mitigations to ensure systems are working smoothly prior to their official launch.
Airports use a variety of management and contracting models to manage OBSs. These can include airport staff working with the OBS vendor directly and managing the system
themselves or outsourcing the operation and management to a third-party parking operator or a commercial management vendor. As a result, system implementation costs and operations vary significantly depending on the OBS management model employed.
Most airports have reported similar benefits since implementing their OBSs. According to the survey results, top benefits include:
- Improved customer experience,
- Information on estimated future parking demand, and
- Increased utilization of parking facilities (i.e., increased parking occupancy).
Increased revenues were reported by a minority of airports surveyed. Some airports have implemented OBSs primarily as a customer benefit and do not use the pricing capabilities available in their systems. Other airports employ some pricing capabilities, but they do not track specific metrics that would provide evidence of increased revenues.
Among the airports that use the pricing capabilities and reported increased revenues:
- One large-hub airport reported a 40% to 50% increase in parking revenues for the airport, attributable to a set of strategies that include use of the OBS. This airport also reported that its parking market share has held steady since the implementation of parking reservations. In contrast, prior to implementation, it had lost significant airport access market share to competitors such as ride app service providers. Another large-hub airport reported a similar competitive benefit in maintaining its measure of parking transactions per enplanement.
- Several airports sell upgrades, from value-oriented parking products (e.g., economy) to premium parking products (e.g., terminal parking or valet). A small-hub airport estimates that these upgrades contribute an additional $150,000 to $200,000 in annual revenues.
The use of parking reservations and OBSs by U.S. airports is a relatively recent development with a common purpose of enhancing the customer experience. As the rate of adoption increases for OBSs, and as airports begin leveraging the customer information for other purposes, including revenue management and building their databases in customer relationship management (CRM) software systems, gaps in knowledge of airport practice will increasingly emerge.
Overall, most airports surveyed were satisfied with their OBS. Among the airport operators surveyed, 11 reported being “satisfied” with their parking OBS, and 5 reported being “very satisfied” with their parking OBS.
