In today’s market, many operators are using third-party aggregators to perform online sales for their garages. What had originally started out as a useful method to backfill open spaces on nights and weekends, quickly overflowed into the day time hours during the business work week.

What many Property Owners do not realize, is that even though there are some integrations with the revenue control equipment, most revenue control equipment has no real method for placing restrictions on the reservation time period. Because of this lack of restrictions, the consumer has the ability to manipulate the process for enforcing the reservation. In the fully automated garage environment, this is an ongoing issue that as a general rule has not been handled well through the remote monitoring channels.

OPS has performed many operational reviews in which the abuse of the online reservations has resulted in significant amount of money being lost to the Property Owner. Loss to the Property Owner can also happen when the third-party reservations are simply a swap out from the normal customer base now buying online for a cheaper price resulting in lost revenue to the Owner.

Many operators feel that they have to discount pricing in order for the third-party aggregator to work effectively for them. This is not always the case. There are key time frames that an operator can still get market rates but use the third-party aggregator for reserving in advance.

When going with the third-party aggregators, several key items should be considered when setting up the garage. The operator should understand the diversity and oversell within the garage, effective pricing, and key timeframes for allowing the third-party aggregator reservations. 

Preparing parking gate control barriers for severe weather

I was supposed to be in Houston, Texas to consult with a hospital client, but Hurricane Harry had other plans for me. When I called to let my client know that all flights into Houston had been cancelled, we started discussing their preparations for the hurricane.

“We’ve raised all the parking gate control barrier arms,” they said. Thinking that was sufficient preparation. If allowing access to the parking structure was the only safety consideration, then just raising the gates would be fine. But my concern was about the gate being torn off during the hurricane and becoming a deadly flying object that could kill someone or damage something.

Hurricane Harvey swept through southeastern Texas, reaching a Category 4 status with wind speeds up to 130 mph. Most gates are not designed to stand up to that level of wind stress. With severe weather like this, the safest preparation is to remove all gate arms from the access control units. This eliminates any possibility of liability.