Airport Pre-book Parking system / E-commerce & V-commerce System

As a concept V-Commerce is on the threshold of being parked in the long-stay bays of many of the UK's most ambitious airports as they flex their regional marketing muscles and welcome aboard the brave new world of' V-Commerce'. 'V' in this instance stands for 'Venue commerce' and from parking to prioritising boarding and even security 'fast track', allows customers to pre-book their total journeys through one portal via their laptop or mobile devices.

For the airports concerned it represents V for victory as they can once again claim back the customers that have slipped under their radar since the advent of the Internet. Millions of people move through airport terminals every day, but for many these customers have become 'strangers on a plane' – simply consumers whose journey starts and ends with an airline or the travel agency website, rather than the airport's own portal. Over a period of years, the airport's knowledge of its footfall has fallen into terminal decline.

The challenge for venue commerce is simple: to enable car park operators, shopping centres, airports, stadia and other landmark venues to capitalise upon the missing customers – those who use the venue as a destination, but bypass it completely by paying through a myriad other channels. It simply empowers the venue to become the trusted retailer and allows it to gain the powerful customer insight to build loyalty by continuing to add value. Done well, it shortens the booking journey which has to be an improvement on some of the fractured experiences endured by millions of visitors.

Worst of all is the fact that the venue itself gets the blame and loses customers if the consumer suffers turbulence or a little air sickness during the third-party booking journey.

For example, getting what is seen as a grudge purchase – the parking – right is a critical ingredient because it is the customer's first experience of the airport. It starts and ends their holiday. Getting it wrong means that whatever treats await them in the terminal will simply fly over their heads. They are a lost customer. It takes years to build up a brand, but minutes to destroy when a passenger has a terrible experience. Not only do they tell all of their friends at dinner parties, but they also share instantly with their virtual communities through the social media channels now open to them.

Online pre-booking of everything from parking to flights offers greater flexibility and more competitive prices. Up until now the airport itself has not been an venue-commerce destination touch point for the traveller, despite the fact that it hosts the passengers, the airlines that fly to that destination, the car parks we all need to guarantee a stress-free holiday and the terminal and airside retail and hospitality units, all of which benefit from the billions of pounds spent.

Which is why the sky's the limit for airports such as Birmingham that have developed a new digital strategy to join up the journeys and build stronger relationships with their passengers and their airport partners in order to engender that all important sense of loyalty based upon positive experiences.

Historically, airport parking has been seen as a bolt-on to the more glamorous venue and the travel it supports. Rarely has the booking or parking itself been viewed by the public as an integrated part of a door-to-door travel experience.

This is because over time the advent of non-airport parking operators and airport aggregators have impacted the airport's brand and revenues and this is simply because the journey has not been joined up – the left arm has not always worked in tandem with the right and the messaging has been far from consistent.

Airports such as Birmingham have now opted to challenge the status quo and are retaking control of their own destinies as well as their passengers' destinations, a move that will increase footfall and revenues because from parking to landing home after their holiday, they want to be seen as providing more valued, richer and more relevant service to its passengers.

Marketing Director at Birmingham Airport, Jo Lloyd, is building a digital offering in three boxes all of which will help the customer on their way. From parking to take off, the airport website provides a positive experience of Birmingham Airport and its partners. Secondly, it is about enforcing the corporate identity and reputation of the airport and finally, it is the simple dissemination of information either through the airport web site or the portals of its partners – so that wherever the customer looks for travel information, he or she sees a consistent shop window of information all working in real time.

The new digital world of pre-booking has transformed parking from an impersonal tarmac experience to an integrated part of the journey. The technology now available to Birmingham works in tandem with all partners to enhance the customer experience with promotions and loyalty offers to maximum security standards and the flexibility to integrate with other systems and support the booking journey at every level. Birmingham Airport's hosted solution literally has its head in the in the 'cloud' to safely enable integration to its existing websites and business processes to reap the incremental revenue benefits of adopting a solution that no longer has to depend upon complexity and stress normally associated with a large scale IT project.

Journeys can be stressful, but they do not need to be fractured and fragmented. The digital world is allowing greater choice of destination and price and rewards us for those choices. As I am discovering as I immerse myself in the world of venue-commerce, changing digital consumer behaviours on behalf of large corporations wanting to re-engage the new generation of so-called 'lost' customers', the battle for tarmac optimisation is now a struggle for hearts and minds. We now live in a travel world where customers are king and where airport parking has become the all-important king maker driving the initial experience and halting what has been viewed as 'Terminal decline.'