Mall operator increased the number of visitors and the revenue in their malls

The challenge

A large operator of commercial buildings, office buildings and shopping centers had a problem with their parking operator having incentives diametrically opposed to their goals and, more importantly, the goals of their tenants. No where was this more visible than at the shopping malls. The malls naturally have car parks attached which are traditionally operated by various car park operators. In the mid-2000s, the parking industry's main income was parking tickets from catching visitors overstaying their paid time.

The parking operators had a bad public reputation which reflected on properties they operated in. There was a flood of complaints from dissatisfied customers but more importantly, the owner of the property was seeing the less important aspect of parking negatively influence the experience of the property´s primary function as a shopping mall. Their tenants´ “best customers rushing out of the mall to avoid getting fined” was their core example to illustrate the problem.  

The Solution

The willingness to pay for parking has always been there, the question is how seamless and simple the experience can be for the customer, as well as the understanding of which parking spaces they are able to charge from the first minute and not.

We developed new technology to handle parking services and cash flow in a more sustainable and customer friendly way. The primary objectives of this solution was to:

• Improve user experience and accessibility.
• Enhance parking management efficiency for administrators.
• Reduce environmental impact through smart resource allocation.
  

In addition to providing the customer with a world class digital parking management system enabling camera parking, digital contracts and permits etc, they focused on increasing the usage of Bembers parking app for end users. Any parking app will let someone pay for parking and secure the landlord his rent, but these players all are focused on that process and not on the primary function of the building.

The parking app works like any other app on the receive payment part, but is designed bottom up with the landlord and his tenants in mind. The parking public are their customers - parking is just a necessity to shop.

The app helps the shopping mall communicate with the parking public at the point of arrival. There are ways to communicate directly in the app, but the most effective use of this function is to use it to recruit members to the local loyalty scheme, or promote the schemes benefits. An integration between the loyalty scheme and the parking system lets the user opt in to having the loyalty scheme know when they are in shopping mode, present at the mall.

To these systems, they also connected solutions to give parking benefits to shoppers, and limit parking by people parking not intending to shop at the mall. With this system in place, shoppers could receive parking benefits such as free parking, while non-shoppers either park elsewhere or pay for their parking.

Implementing the new solution we, in addition to the improved user experience, also achieved:

• Increased number of members in the loyalty scheme
• Improved communications with loyalty club members
• Reduced cost in wasted communications to members not in shopping mode
• Increase amount of money spent at the mall per visitor
• Reduced parking by non-shopping visitors freeloading off any free time intended for shoppers
• Cost reductions in less equipment and labor needed through license plate recognition
• Cost reductions by limiting the parking operators scope of contract