Full garages are both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, lots of people are parking in a given facility, while on the other, this means potentially turning away customers and having to carefully balance your transient and monthly customers to ensure you maintain your commitments to service.

So how do you make space when you just don’t have any?

Draw Outside the Lines

Want to know a parking trade secret? Every garage has two different space counts: one of actual lined spaces and one of what are considered working spaces. Working spaces are spaces that are not necessarily painted but are still legal options to place vehicles. This may include in aisles, ramps, corners, or tandem spaces. By utilizing these spaces, while of course considering safety and service, we can valet cars and greatly expand the amount of available spaces in the garage. We call this valet assist. Sometimes we do this on a temporary basis and other times on a semi-permanent basis.

Get Creative

In addition to valet assist operations in a garage there are numerous ways to structure capacity based on rates and hours. Colonial Parking’s Yield Management team does this daily by constantly looking at rates and ways to maximize occupancy and profit. For instance, Early Bird parkers receive a lower rate for Daily parking by coming in early and can fill a garage quickly. If a location needs more space for monthly tenant parkers, but wants to avoid losing transient revenue and turning people away, implementing a higher Early Bird rate or limiting Early Bird hours can ensure more space for monthly parkers, while still maintaining revenue.

It can be a complicated formula balancing capacity and service, but Colonial Parking is a pro at it. Our goal is to make sure there is always an available parking space for our customers in all our garages, while still ensuring the great level of personal service our customers are used to and while providing value for our clients.

Whether a temporary service problem or a long-term one, please let us know how we can help you with your facility.

 

– Allison Howard

Senior Marketing Manager

 

About Colonial Parking: Colonial Parking manages 280 plus parking locations in the Washington, DC area. We are dedicated to providing exceptional service to both our customers and clients, as well as hiring trusted and driven employees that exude our integrity and accountability. We would be happy to review your project, be it large or small.