A New Look at Parking – Aashish Dalal, CEO ParkWhiz
A New Look at Parking
By Aashish Dalal, CEO ParkWhiz
This week ParkWhiz launched Simple Price Parking in Chicago, a flat rate pricing model, as a way to help drivers park where they want for a simple low rate and our parking partners have a collective voice in the transportation conversation sparked by the taxi wars. Since the launch, we’ve received some great feedback and some questions about how it all works.
We launched Simple Price Parking to benefit both drivers and our parking partners. It’s easy to see that consumers have more choice than ever when it comes to getting around; from on demand taxi apps, ridesharing, public transportation to driving and more. The convenience economy has made it easy for consumers to manage the transportation choices they have. From taxi pricing and drive time, to real-time train arrivals and bus schedules consumers have a wealth of information at their fingertips. However, when it comes to driving, there remained some amount of friction and much of it had to do with the price of parking. With Simple Price Parking, we reduce the barriers to parking so consumers can feel good about driving when they need the flexibility and convenience of having their car on hand. To make it easier for everyone, we decided to offer consistent low pricing in lieu of using promo codes and limited-time discounts.
By consistently offering low pricing, we are able to bring new customers to the platform, those that had otherwise written off driving for taxis and other transportation. While we are strong advocates for alternative modes of transportation, there are times when going from point A to B can be more appealing when driving. These qualified commuters can now easily discover our parking operator partners through the ParkWhiz app. With more customers on hand, our partners receive a host of benefits:
- New customers for the same price – our agreement with our partners has not changed
- Repeat customers – by minimizing price as a barrier we believe our partners will see more customers repeating more often
- Flexibility to manage their inventory within the ParkWhiz ecosystem with multiple ways to surface Simple Price Parking to qualified commuters
- Added value for today’s mobile centric consumer
We are excited about Simple Price Parking and the innovative marketplace it helps us create to let customers and parking partners discover each other right when they need to. We are always working on new and better ways to make that happen.