May 2010 Parking - 14

Tech Talk Blake Laufer and Zack Harmeyer
Parking is mostly about self-service—parkers are responsible for parking their cars. But there is one “unusual” area of our industry that doesn’t fit this mold—valet parking. For some folks, the thought of handing over their car keys brings up flashbacks of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, where the sleazy valet driver (“Puh-leez, I’m a professional!”) takes Cameron’s father’s 1961 Ferrari GT for an airborne spin over the hills of San Francisco. I have to admit that while I’ve worked with numerous parking technologies for enforcement, permits, access and revenue control—they’ve always been technologies built around a self-parking type of operation. So for today’s technology column I had to enlist some help. Zack Harmeyer has been with T2 Systems for only seven months, but he comes with years of experience in valet operation. When I asked Zack for some advice on today’s column, he took the time to write most of the article (thanks, Zack!) Let’s start with a video game about valet parking that Zack found online. Yes, it’s hard to believe that some folks might actually enjoy parking virtual cars just to pass the time. The premise is simple: You’re the newbie hotel valet parker and your goal is to drive your customers’ vehicles safely to and from a facility’s parking lot. What a concept—just drive a car and park it in a space quickly and without hitting anything like a pole or a pedestrian.

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“Technological innovation is one way to differentiate your valet operation.”

Does this mirror the real world? Well, according to Zack, it sort of actually does. The valet operator has three simple goals: (1) minimize the customer’s wait time, (2) return the vehicle and contents as they were received, and (3) be efficient, because time saved is money earned. Zack tells me that technology is re-writing the rules of valet parking. And this is important not just because technology is cool, but because valet is often considered a commodity business—and in a commodity business the road to success and profitability is to have higher efficiency than the next guy. Technological innovation is one way to differentiate your valet operation. The first piece of technology that has profoundly improved the world of valet parking actually comes from the automobile manufacturers: the lowly “valet key.” A simple concept, this key provides only limited access to the vehicle: it starts the car and opens the driver’s door, but won’t open the trunk or glove compartment (where items may not be discovered missing for days or weeks). In some high-performance vehicles, use of the valet key will also restrict engine output to prevent joyriding. Theft of vehicle contents leads to higher costs of running the valet operation, so encouraging use of valet keys significantly reduces the risk of theft. Vehicle damage is also erodes the razor thin margins of a parking operation. Just one scratch to an Esplanade or door-ding on a Bentley can make the difference between a profitable versus unprofitable month. In places like Manhattan and Washington, D.C., where vehicles are frequently parked so close the driver has to climb out through the vehicle’s window, damage claims can become daily managerial nightmares. (Zack said he knew of one hotel site where they regularly packed 250 cars into 120 stalls). A simple method of keeping the tightly-packed cheaper cars separated from the leave-some-room expensive vehicles reduces risk and saves on total damages.

National Parking Association Parking May 2010

May 2010 Parking

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May 2010 Parking