The car park industry has been quick to recognise and adopt well-established revenue management practices from a variety of other industries. In fact, variable online booking pricing is relatively commonplace at many airport car parks. However, we commonly hear car park operators ask, “Can I truly optimise my car park’s revenue by adjusting rates through our online booking system?”
In the car parking industry, there are definitely some confusing aspects to variable pricing versus dynamic pricing—and that includes its overall role in maximising revenue. The confusion around pricing approaches has even paved the way for some technology providers to claim their solutions have optimal revenue performance capabilities, even though they only address pricing, and not inventory.
This is especially true where allocation or “bucket” methods are used to influence price changes, since this particular approach often overlooks the date of arrival and length-of-stay impacts on pricing decisions. Today’s reality is that car park operators cannot maximise their revenue—or profitability—by solely managing rates within an online booking system.
LIMITATIONS OF VARIABLE PRICING-ONLY APPROACH
While users of online booking systems continue to successfully increase online business (in both volume and revenue), they still face some limitations to maximising revenue:
“In addition to price, we need to be able to use length-of-stay controls to help maximise our revenue during busy periods.”
So how does that work? In situations with more demand than spaces, car parks need tools that enable them to accept a mix of demand that achieves the highest average daily rate across an entire period.
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About IDeaS 
With more than 1.6 million hotel rooms and parking spaces priced daily on its advanced systems, IDeaS Revenue Solutions leads the industry with the latest revenue management software and advisory services. Powered by SAS® and with nearly three decades of experience, IDeaS proudly supports over 10,000 clients in 124 countries and is relentless about providing clients with insightful ways to manage the data behind hotel and car park pricing.
IDeaS empowers its clients to build and maintain revenue management cultures–from single entities to world-renowned estates–by focusing on a simple promise: Driving Better Revenue.
IDeaS has the knowledge, expertise and maturity to build upon proven revenue management principles with next-generation analytics for more user-friendly, insightful and profitable revenue opportunities across the enterprise.
For more information, visit www.ideas.com.
