Every driver knows the importance of a car park. Increasingly more often shopping centre, hotel and office building owners are paying a lot of attention to the choice of car park infrastructure as well as professional car park arrangements and service already at an early stage of the investment process.
A car park is more than just a space where we can leave our vehicles. It is also a management model, which, together with modern technology improves the car parking and fee collection process, which constitutes a significant item in a shopping centre's revenue structure.
Maciej Zawadzki, President of the Management Board at APCOAPARKING Polska talks about what’s new on the car park system and car park management scenes.
Today, APCOA PARKING is the biggest player on the car park market in Poland as well as Europe.What lies behind the company’s success?
Our company has been present in Europe since 1974, we operate in 12 countries and manage in excess of 8,500 car parks, including almost 400 shopping centre car parks. Our annual revenues exceed 850 million euros. APCOA PARKING has been active in Poland since 1998, setting out standards and development directions on the domestic car park management market. Currently we manage more than 70 car parks. We furnish them with state of the art hardware from renowned international producers, which, combined with the international experience of our team, ensures efficiency and a top quality service. For every car park we manage, we work out a concept for the best traffic setup, hardware and management choices, including an optimal tariff structure, taking onto account both the specifics of the given location and customer expectations. The quality and efficiency of the services we provide are the driving force behind our company's 20 - 30% annual growth recorded in recent years.
What new locations use your services?
Amongst others, this year we signed a long term management contract for a multi level Warsaw Financial Center car park. This is one of the most prestigious office towers in downtown Warsaw, with 333 car park spaces. At the same time, we also manage car parks in other towers which comprise an ultra-modern office centre in central Warsaw, i.e. by Rondo1, Marriott Hotel, Spektrum Tower and the nearby Atrium International office buildings. This year newcomers to the portfolio of our projects also include further city car parks as well as retail locations across the entire country, at chains such as Tesco, Netto and Biedronka. In total we currently manage car parks at more than 20 retail locations in Poland.
However, APCOA is not only involved with car parks by retail and office locations?
Certainly. Our company also manages car parks by other locations such as hotels, hospitals, airports, city car parks, cinemas, sports and recreational facilities. We devise an individual strategy for each one, which also includes retail opportunities to maximise the profitability of a given car park.
What technical solutions and cutting edge technologies are we looking at across the car parks you manage?
APCOA Group experts regularly analyse the European car park systems market. Every few years we select a few manufacturers who, in our opinion, provide top quality as well as reliable and technologically advanced car park equipment. We currently use systems by Designa, Parkeon and Skidata. Our significant European purchasing power translates into sizeable discounts which, as a rule, we pass onto our customers. We use car park systems based on solutions which employ barriers as well as maintenance free parking meters. Every equipment category is dedicated to a different type of location. The current standard emerging amongst modern technologies are LED systems which indicate free parking spaces to drivers, or the possibility to pay using proximity bank cards at automatic payment machines and parking meters. We are currently working on introducing new, alternative forms of payment which will be even more convenient for drivers. An increasing number of car park owners are looking at car park system digitalisation. Then we reach for vehicle registration plate recognition systems, systems based on QR codes or advanced car park spaces reservation systems.
Thank you for the interview!
