QuickPark Blog

As Founder and CEO of Parking Logistics I have an interesting, yet hectic job.  Every day I am confronted with a variety of tasks ranging from development of our website to brokering deals with prospective business partners.  While many people clamor to be the head person in charge, few truly realize the amount of responsibility that comes along with the position.  Unlike regular employees, we don't work 9-5 jobs, we aren't allowed to leave work at the office, and taking extended vacations is often more fantasy than reality.  As much work as my job is, I would not trade it for the world because I truly do enjoy every minute of the variety of my day.

One of my favorite job functions is getting out and meeting new people at networking functions and other events.  Throughout the course of an evening out, I always seem to meet a plethora of people from a variety of backgrounds.  In each exchange the typical, "so what do you do" is asked leading down a winding road of conversation that typically leaves us both more enlightened than we were mere moments before.  When asked about QuickPark my typical definition is an online service, similar in nature to Expedia and Travelocity, which helps individuals find and reserve parking near a destination of their choice.  This is generally receives a few different reactions, a side eyed "well that sounds interesting, where does it work", and a more excited "wow thats really cool, finding parking is always such a hassle".  Of all the exchanges I've had about QuickPark, the one reaction I have never received is the grumpy, "well I don't think anyone would ever use that".  After just a brief explanation, I always see the light bulb go off in people's head when they make a connection to our service and their typical parking experience.

Let's face it, parking is rarely a pleasant experience.  In fact it can be so miserable at times, we decide a trip is just not worth the hassle.  A quick search through Twitter shows just how negative an experience parking can really be:

• "Don't make no sense that I gotta pray and ask God to deliver me a parking spot smh"
• "So not a fan of Chapmans parking situation right now, boo to everyone taking up the Davis lot!"
• "Parking pass: $10. Convenience Fee: $2. Order Processing: $3.50. Print-at-home fee: $1.75. Total cost for $10 parking pass: $17.25"

While finding parking is far from a perfect process, this simply means we have a huge opportunity to truly make a difference in the lives of our customers.  We currently provide parking information about over 100,000 parking spaces in 100 cities around the US, with more being added every day.  There is still much work to be done, but we are moving in the right direction.  Parking reservations have been commonplace among the airport crowd for quite some time, especially at the increasing number of off airport facilities that keeps popping up.  One of our biggest challenges going forward will be working with surface lots and parking garages in congested downtown areas, where precise times of travel is not always known.  Additionally we are researching and developing tools for reserving parking at popular events such as professional sports games and concerts.

I truly believe finding parking should not be a negative experience and remain committed to doing everything within my power to ensure that we make it as painless a process as possible.  We will continually make improvements to our service by working hand in hand with our parking partners to deliver an unparalleled experience to all parties involved.  If you have any ideas about how we can better meet your needs feel free to contact me personally at shawn.scott (at) quickparkonline (dot) com. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

What if it were considerably cheaper to walk into an airport the day of your trip and buy a plane ticket?  What if the only way to get a hotel room was to walk up to the front desk?  How would this change  the way you travel?  If you’re anything like me, this would be like going back to the stone ages and make every trip you took a complete mess.  But isn’t this how the parking industry typically works?  In a given day you might park your car in 2 to 10 different places, and have a different experience with finding parking each time.  The most common experience though is to keep driving around until you find a space within a reasonable distance to your destination.  Sometimes this can be instant, but in most congested areas finding parking is a crapshoot at best.

Since the 70s airlines and hotels have practiced what is called “revenue management” to determine the best price to charge for any particular point in time.  The goal of revenue management is to use the laws of supply and demand to optimize operations and maximize revenue.  If you were to talk to 10 other people on your airplane you would probably find a vast range of fares paid depending on the date and time their reservation was made.  Even the person sitting in the seat right next to you could have paid considerably more or less than you depending on when they booked their reservation.  Typically the earlier in advance a reservation is made the better the price for the ticket.  Occasionally last minute deals can be found to fill up the last few seats on a flight, getting $100 for a seat is better than nothing.  With hotels similar pricing schemes are used as their rates fluctuate throughout the week depending on current demand.  During peak periods you can expect to pay a premium over the standard rate, which only makes sense if you are analyzing the bottom line.

In the parking industry however it feels as though we’ve been left in the dust.  Some locations offer early bird pricing which rewards you with a cheaper price for entering the facility earlier than the peak crowd.  Typically however most parking pricing is static and based on standard pricing rules based on the length of your stay.  Recently there have been projects popping up around the country that are moving to a more dynamic model such as SFPark in San Francisco, CA.  Very soon on street parking throughout the city will become more fluid as pricing will change depending on the current demand at the time.  While everyone hates paying more for parking, pricing control is the only way to ensure available parking can always be found.  In our hometown of Ventura, CA a new project is on the verge of being rolled out to begin charging for on street parking.  The goal of both of these projects is to help ease parking congestion in popular areas in order to benefit everyone involved.  We might not like having to pay for parking, but most people hate not being able to find a parking space even more.  Inevitably when we can’t find parking in a reasonable time frame we end up deciding against the trip and going somewhere else.

The main goal of QuickPark is to save you time and money when you park.  One of the biggest problem with many internet based parking reservation systems is that they actually cost you more money than just going to the location.  In many instances you are required to fork over anywhere from $2-$10 in order to guarantee a parking space upon your arrival.  This becomes even more problematic when you arrive at the location and there is ample available parking, rendering your reservation unnecessary.  To combat this problem our official policy is to not charge any fees whatsoever on top of the parking fee imposed by the parking location.    In the near future we hope to work with our parking providers to offer even bigger savings on parking, but using revenue management techniques to decrease the cost of an advanced reservation the further in advance it is placed.  We are also working to build out support for time sensitive discounts which help fill the last few spots available during special events.

Our number one job is to improve your parking experience and we are constantly at work looking for new ways to do that.  Stay tuned for more exciting announcements in the near future, we definitely have a lot planned for the rest of the year.

If you've visited the QuickPark website over the past week, you have probably noticed that things have changed quite a bit.  Over the last few months we have been working on overhauling our UI to make it easier for you to find the information you're looking for.  One small change that we just rolled out has the potential to make a big difference in helping you decide where to park.

As we sat around brainstorming ideas of what information to present and where to put it, one topic that came up consistently is what measurement to use for displaying distances between locations.  Initially the easiest thing to do was keep all the measurements in miles since its a distance that we use everyday.  However, issues come up when you get into fractional miles because our minds have a hard time visualizing them.  Everyone knows what a quarter mile is, but not many people can accurate picture the distance in their minds.  The other problem with using miles is that no one wants to park a mile from their destination if they can help it.

So next we thought of city blocks.  It's easy enough to understand being 3 blocks from a restaurant.  So we did all the math conversions and tried showing blocks only to be confronted with a few tough issues.  Typically distances between two locations are calculated using a straight line method that takes into account the curvature of the Earth.  Most of the time this is sufficient for general distance calculations, however problems arise when you add in local topography such as buildings and waterways.  While two locations could technically be 3 blocks apart, the true navigable distance between them could actually be greater depending on what sits in the middle. The second issue was actually in how block distance looks on a map. On average a city block is 1/10th of a mile, however in certain areas this number can vary. Since we don't have any reliable way of knowing exactly how big each block is in a given area, we decided against using this measurement.

After much thought and deliberation we finally decided to uses walking minutes as our official distance measurement.  On average people walk at a pace of 3 miles per hour, so after converting this into minutes we have our solution.  Our search page allows you to filter locations between 0 and 20 minutes away from your destination which should be sufficient for 99% of our audience.  Now when you have to be somewhere at a certain time, you have a pretty good estimate of how long it will take to get from your car to the building.  

Please try it out and let us know what you think!

In recent months there has been a concerted effort by many cities to improve their parking operations.  In many cases this has been in the form of replacing outdated, standalone, coin-based parking meters with a more intelligent breed that can accept credit cards and manage multiple spaces.  Additionally there have been a number of deployments of pay-by-phone  systems using technologies from companies such as ParkMobile and Verrus.  Another relatively new development is the advent of demand based pricing models which fluctuate the cost of parking in a particular location depending on current demand and time of day.

While these advances of technology are definitely welcome in an industry that has been slow to change, they still leave a rather gaping hole for consumers.  No matter how convenient parking payments become, it will never matter if drivers cannot find an available space.  The number one benefit of QuickPark is allowing drivers  to quickly and easily find parking near the destination of their choice.  Everyday we work round the clock to improve this process by adding more data to our system and developing new features that better streamline the process.  One of the bigger new features we are adding is the ability to sort and filter your search results by location type, price, distance, rating, and amenities offered.  If you're all dressed up and don't want to walk too far, then minimize your walking distance.  Not carrying any cash, filter out all locations that don't accept credit cards.

Next month we will be releasing version 2.0 of the QuickPark website which will include the new sorting/filtering functionality, as well as version 1.0 of our new mobile app which will bring the QuickPark experience to the iPhone.  With these two releases, we will continue to solidify our product to meet our customer wants and needs.  Over the next fews weeks we will also be posting new blog articles outlining some of the new features in depth.  If there is a particular feature you would like to see included in a future product version, feel free to let us know at feedback@quickparkonline.com

Now that we're moved in, the real work begins.  One of the biggest advantages of our new office is that we're located right in City Hall.  Every day I run into new people and make new connections.  Occassionally we even get visitors in the office, curious to see what all the new stuff on our floor is all about.

As I've mentioned before, we are hard at work at improving the QuickPark experience.  Whenever I tell someone about the site, they are always quick to share some of their parking experience and provide helpful tips about what we can do to solve some of these problems.  Additionally we have been gathering a considerable amount of data from the site over the last few months to see where and when people are looking to park.  We will be incorporating all of this information into the product over the coming months to hopefully meet as many needs as possible.

Another key development has been the start on our mobile platform.  Mobile apps are all the rage these days and it's about time we put our hat in the ring.  Our mobile team is staying busy round the clock, the make our app the best experience available on a mobile device.  I can't give away too many details but I'm pretty sure you will be excited to get your hands on the app when it's ready.

Well it's time to get back to work, I hope to have more exciting news to share with you soon!

Now that the industry has matured, what's next?  I can check-in in at least 5 different ways pretty much wherever I go, but what does any of it ultimately mean?  Yeah I can find out who's nearby, which for me is typically no one that I actually know.  Is the best application of this information a way for the unscrupulous to rob me when I'm supposedly not around?  There has to be some killer application that takes advantage of knowing where I am at all times.  Foursquare seems to be headed down the right path by partnering with local businesses to deliver specials to people who check-in at certain locations.  I would definitely be more apt to frequent a bar if I knew I could get a free beer by just checking in.

One of the more intriguing things we are currently working on is a mobile version of QuickPark.  This is a very important step for us as we want to deliver hyperlocal, realtime information to our users, and there is no better place to do this than your mobile device.  Part of the difficulty of building a quality app is determining the right feature set that doesn't make  just a "me too" product, but instead sets a new bar for what is possible on a mobile device.  Of course you want to be able to find available parking on your phone and make a reservation when possible, but what else?

What happens when you're in a long meeting and when you get out you can barely remember where you parked your car?  What about when you park at a meter and your appointment runs longer than you originally planned?  What if you could extend your time without going back to the car?  What if you found yourself with some extra time on your hands and you want to find a good local sandwich shop?  What if they knew you were nearby and sent you a coupon for $5 off your meal for checking them out?

I know that sounds like a lot of what ifs, but I believe it is all possible right now.  The most successful location based applications will be the ones that leverage your information to deliver useful information and services to you.  We still have a ways to go before apps reach their full potential, but we're committed to making sure that happens sooner rather than later.

Somewhat out of the blue I was presented an ad on Facebook about a technology incubator located in Ventura that worked with early stage startups.  After clicking through their website and a tour of the facility, I began to give the idea of relocation to LA some serious thought.  While being in Dallas has been great, this represents an incredible opportunity for the growth of our company.

Beginning in March we will be relocating our corporate office to the Ventura Ventures Technology Center (V2TC).  Over the next few months our focus will be on continuing to build out the QuickPark site to provide a better experience for our customers, as well as raising additional funding from the venture capital community.  With this funding we will be expanding our staff and building up our internal infrastructure to support our future growth plans.  Additionally we will be able to work with mentors who have tons more experience in building successful companies.

This whole situation is somewhat surreal considering not long ago this entire was simply an idea in my head.  We still have a long ways to go, but with enough hard work and dedication we will soon reach that light at the end of the tunnel.  There is are tons of things in the hopper that we hope to roll out over the coming months.    Thanks for sticking by us throughout it all!

While things have been a bit quiet here on the blog, please don't think that means we haven't been busy.  Today we have officially passed the milestone of having 1,000 locations listed on our site.  To add to this exciting news, this also means that we have over 560,000 parking spaces profiled as well.

While this is a major milestone for us, it is only the beginning.  In the coming months we hope to add thousands of more locations and increase the number of locations where you can book reservations.  Additionally we are working on some mobile products that are sure to make some noise in the industry.  Stay tuned for more news soon!

Whenever I'm shopping online, one of the biggest things I look at when learning about new products is what other people think about it.  Best Buy carries many different types of laptops many with similar specs, but what interests me most is how it  will perform once a get it home and put it through the paces.

Our new review system relies heavily on the 5 star rating system across 6 main categories as outlined below:

• Overall - This represents an individual's overall opinion of a parking location.
• Service - The quality of service received at the location.
• Condition - The physical condition of the location, including cleanliness and maintenance.
• Security - How secure the location feels.
• Neighborhood - Opinion of the area surrounding the parking location.

Additionally we also track whether a person would recommend the parking location to a friend, whether the location meets their expectations given the price they paid, and whether or not they would recommend QuickPark to a friend.  The last feature we have implemented is the ability to have a member of the QuickPark staff contact you regarding your review.  This feature can be used for both good and bad reviews and we encourage it's use.  If you have an issue with either our site or one of our parking location partners we want to know about it ASAP so we can get it resolved.  We are equally interested in knowing when we have done a superb job in your opinion.

One of the other perplexing issues with developing this feature was who we would allow to leave reviews.  Ultimately we have decided that the best use of the tool would be to open it up to all registered users of our site.  This means that anyone can review any location listed on the site.  We just ask that you don't abuse this and only make fair reviews based on your actual experiences.  If we need to revisit this policy in the future we will, but for now we think this serves the greatest good.

Please keep in mind that this is the initial version of this feature.  One thing I've learned in all my development days is you never get any feature completely right at first.  We will look at how people are using the feature and make changes as necessary.  If you have any feedback please feel free to use our feedback tool that appears on the left side of every page.  We love to hear from you!