ts.com

Online car park pre-booking takes off at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is Europe’s fourth largest airport. Welcoming over 40 million passengers each year and operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the airport required an accessible and reliable system which would allow its customers to pre-book their car parking online at any time of the day or night.

Staying one step ahead

It found the answer it was looking for in ts.com’s award-winning online sales and marketing system ticketingsolutions. Integrated with SkiData, one of the world’s leading access control equipment providers, the ticketingsolutions system provides Amsterdam Schiphol with a comprehensive pre-booking and ticket-less parking service to help the airport stay one step ahead of its competitors.

Dual language bookings

Spaces at the airport’s car park can be pre-booked online via its website www.schiphol.nl. ticketingsolutions works to offer airport visitors three individually branded long-term online booking packages. Customers can make their booking in either English or Dutch as ticketingsolutions automatically recognises which language to display once the selection has been made on the main website.

The accessibility and user-friendliness of the system are important, as David Nannini, Product Manager of Travel Services at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, explains, “as one of the first centres in the Netherlands to implement an online pre-booking service, we are constantly looking for new ways to enhance our customers’ experience of the airport. ticketingsolutions provides customers with a fast and convenient way to book their parking and helps to make their airport journeys easier”.

Managing traffic flow effectively

With the integrated ticketingsolutions system visitors simply use their credit card as an entry and exit pass to the car park and their online booking is immediately recognised by the access control equipment. This conveniently removes the need for customers to obtain a parking ticket and also eliminates lengthy queues at payment machines upon departure from the airport. As David explains, “the access control integration and the management reporting functions within ticketingsolutions offer the added advantage of us being able to manage flow in and out of the car parks more effectively. This not only makes parking quick and easy for customers, it also eases the pressure on our staff, even at peak times.”

Online Promotions

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol has also welcomed the opportunities for running promotions through the ticketingsolutions system, currently offering savings to customers of between €30-€45 if they book online. “The service means we can offer special rates to customers who reserve their space up to a week in advance of their visit to the airport”, says David. “As a result, we’ve seen the number of online bookings increase dramatically”.

Increased advance bookings and new sales channels

Indeed parking pre-sales overall have risen since the airport first implemented ticketingsolutions back in October 2004. As David says, “when we started using the system we used to get an average of 10 online bookings a day. Now this figure has risen to more than 100. This year, in January alone, we took 4000 bookings – and that occurred during the off-peak season!”

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is also using the collector functionality to send bookings directly into the access control barriers from ticketingsolutions, enabling the airport to forge new partnerships with a number of Dutch airlines and travel operators to expand their pre-booking audience. As David concludes, “the ticketingsolutions system has completely revolutionised car parking at Amsterdam Schiphol. We are now able to operate a far more streamlined operation and, at the same time, provide a superior level of service to customers. It really does offer the best of both worlds”.