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

On one level, the development of airports can be described as a battle over tarmac. Whether it is the territorial capacity issues of additional runway requirements beyond London to reduce air congestion, or the battle to optimise those other fundamental acres of concrete, the curtilage car parks, these pitched battles over land use underline a bigger struggle – that for the hearts and minds of customers. Other than convenience, why should they fly to whatever holiday or business destination from your airport? Moreover, how do you get them to keep coming back to you?

Millions of people move through airport terminals every day, but for many these customers have become 'strangers on a plane' – simply consumers whose eCommerce 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. But now, like passengers at the baggage carrousel, many international airports are enhancing their own digital offering to 'reclaim their customers' from the aggregators of parking at one end to the purchase of a priority security lane at the other.

Getting the parking right is a critical ingredient because it is the customer's first experience of the airport. Getting it wrong means that whatever treats await them in the terminal, will simply fly over their heads. They are a lost customer.

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 ecommerce 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.

Airports such as Birmingham have 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. It takes years to build up a brand, but minutes to destroy when a passenger has a terrible experience, for example. Not only do they tell all of their friends at dinner parties, but also share instantly with their virtual communities through the social media channels now open to them. Building this positive experience, all starts with what is traditionally seen as a grudge purchase – the parking.

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.

That is why airports such as Birmingham have opted to challenge the status quo and are retaking control of their own destinies as well as their passenger's 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.

At Birmingham Airport, marketing director 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.

Systems have been around for years that help airports to manage aspects of their parking service. The available systems mainly originated in accounting solutions and dealt mostly with tracking purchases. 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.

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 in my role as an ecommerce specialist analyst looking at 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.'