Meet and greet airport parking – book with an established company

As someone who has been working in marketing for an airport parking business for several years now, it amazes me how many new meet and greet parking companies appear out of the woodwork just before the busy summer holiday period.

While I appreciate that if you are starting a new parking venture you would want to get it started in time for a busy period where, if you get enough exposure and can rank highly in the search engines (paid or organic), you’ll get enough bookings to help you get through the quieter periods until the next major getaway.

The great thing about the internet is that you can have immediate exposure for your business – just create a website, add a booking engine so that you can sell you product or service, and then use Google adwords to get your site in the top position.

Research shows that the top position in the organic search engine rankings gains around 40% of all clicks. If you don’t have one of the top positions through organic results you can pay to get your website at the top of the page in the sponsored results, while work goes on behind the scenes to increase your natural rankings.

But, buyers beware, just because a site appears high up in the paid listings doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best company to buy from.

In the case of meet and greet parking, you are about to leave possibly your second most expensive possession with a company you know very little about, so isn’t it worth doing some research about the company and their car park before you book?

In today’s economic times we are all looking for ways to save money, especially when we’re going on holiday – a few pounds saved here and there could pay for a nice meal out. While I don’t want to knock new parking companies trying to get a break in the business – after all, we had to start somewhere - the problem with a lot of new start-up meet and greet car parking companies is that, in order to take business away from the established companies, they set their prices very low, often at unsustainably low levels.

Some companies setting up just to take advantage of the busy holiday season and then go back to their regular work after the demand has disappeared, will often cut corners on car park rental, insurance, drivers and other measures.

If the parking is so cheap – too-good-to-be-true cheap – you have to ask yourself:

• Where are they parking my car?
• Do they have insurance?
• Are the drivers being paid enough to make it worth their while?

The overheads of a meet and greet parking company can be high. Reputable companies need to:

• Own or lease an approved car park close to the airport
• Have sufficient security installed to ensure the vehicles are kept safe from harm
• Employ experienced drivers of a minimum 25 years of age and operate a secure recruitment process
• Perform security checks on all staff
• Pay employees to man the telephones
• Have a uniform
• Train their staff
• Operate 24 hours per day without any staff working for too many hours
• Maintain a website
• Pay a secure and reliable card payment service and merchant
• Have sufficient insurance to cover customers’ cars while they are being driven to and from the airport.

There has been plenty of negative press about the meet and greet parking industry: Watchdog programmes, newspaper articles and much more. And, while it is good to alert the public to the cowboy traders out there, it, unfortunately, tarnishes the businesses of all meet and greet operators, including the reputable ones.

So, if you are looking to book meet and greet parking this summer, how do you find a reputable company?

Firstly, don’t be afraid to ask questions, after all it is your valuable car you plan to leave with them. The following tips should help you:

Telephone number
There should be a landline number that you can use to call the company, not just a mobile number. If the only contact number available is a mobile number, alarm bells should be ringing.

Car park
Find out where the company parks their cars.

For security reasons, the company may not disclose the actual location of their car park, but they should give you a general location and inform you of how many miles away from the airport it is. The car park should also be hard standing, not on grass – you don’t want to divert to a car wash on the way home to get the mud washed off your car.

The car park should also be licensed. Maintaining a car park with adequate security and insurance is expensive, and fly-by-night companies have been known to park cars in ‘unofficial’ car parks: fields, supermarket car parks, industrial estates, and even by the roadside.

Identification
Your driver should carry identification and ideally be uniformed. If the website doesn’t provide details, ask the company how you will recognise their driver.

When you hand over your car at the airport, you should be given a receipt for your car that you hand back to the driver when you return from holiday. Check to see what measures are in place to ensure that your car isn’t handed back to the wrong person.

Drivers
Look for a meet and greet parking company that employs mature, experienced drivers and does background checks to ensure that they don’t employ drivers with criminal records?
Security
Ideally, but not necessarily, you should use a company that has a ParkMark approved car park. The Parkmark Safer Parking Scheme is an initiative of the Associations of Chief Police Officers aimed at reducing crime and the fear of crime in parking facilities. In order to gain the certification, the car park must meet the requirements of a risk assessment conducted by the Police. Car parks are assessed annually to ensure the safety and security standards are maintained.

All car parks should be secured with physical security measures or have a 24/7 security presence.

Payment
Watch out for companies that require payment in cash on the day, this is a sure sign that you’re booking with a company that isn’t an established, reputable operator.

Procedures
An established, reputable company will have a definitive meet and greet procedure in place so that you know where you will be met and what happens when you return. This information should be readily available on their site, if not, ask.

So, when booking airport parking for a busy holiday period, particularly during the summer, do your research. Think before you book, and if you have any concerns about the company you plan to use, call them or look online for reviews of their company.

Remember, if you’re booking with a company that requires payment in cash on the day, only uses a mobile phone for contact and doesn’t have a business address, what guarantees do you have that they’ll bring your car back to you when you return. And if they don’t, how are you going to contact them?

Paula Garrett is a frequently traveller and a regular user of Gatwick meet and greet. Paula advises air passengers to book Gatwick airport meet and greet parking as early as possible this summer.