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Wellington International Airport in New Zealand has become Chauntry’s first client outside Europe.
Wellington Airport’s new on-line car park booking service is a first for New Zealand airports and allows the customer to access considerable savings by booking early.
The Airport was aware of the potential of on-line pre-booking for parking, stimulating demand that should result in an overall increase in revenues.
Airport visitors can now seek the lowest rate available for car parking by pre-booking a space online. Customers are encouraged to go online as soon as their travel arrangements are finalised to access the best discounts. “We have responded to customers’ inquiries as to how we can provide guaranteed priority access to our car parks. Customers know when they are travelling and they want certainty at a good price. The new on-line booking system offers customers flexibility in choice and supports corporates seeking the best price of the day”, said Wellington Airport CEO, Steven Fitzgerald.
The new booking system is a clear 5-step process available through the airport web site www.wellingtonairport.co.nz. It realistically supports the traveller, whose plans may change, allowing booking changes and cancellations up to the day of travel and receive a full refund during the launch offer. The process is fully integrated with existing car park equipment, simplifying car park entry and exiting. Customers will use the credit card at the boom gate, negating the need to carry a ticket or go to either the kiosk or payment machines separately.
Wellington Airport set out to source a proven product to ensure reliability for customers from day one, selecting UK-based Chauntry’s Parkspace solution, hosted in the UK. The arrangement with Chauntry involves modest set-up costs with on-going transaction-based processing fees.
Chauntry had the challenge of meeting a very tight time table that required the service to be live well before the Christmas period. The time difference necessitated commitment on both sides to early mornings and late evenings at key stages of the project including webinar based training.
“The successful implementation of Wellington’s on-line pre-booking solution on schedule to a client literally on the other side of the world, proves not only our global capability but also our commitment to customer excellence” comment a delighted Theresa Hughes, Chauntry’s Managing Director. “Our solution can enable any airport anywhere in the World to truly develop customer service with the significant potential benefit of increasing non aeronautical revenue, very important in these commercially challenging times.”
Wellington International Airport Limited is majority owned by Infratil. Infratil is an owner and operator of businesses in the energy (mainly renewable), airport and public transport sectors. Its energy operations are predominantly in New Zealand and Australia. The company owns other airports in Glasgow and Kent in the UK and Chauntry provides car parking solutions to Infratil’s Glasgow Prestwick Airport. Infratil's public transport services are in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand.Chauntry provides Parkspace for Arlanda and 2 other Swedish Airports.
Sweden’s Airport operating group LFV has selected Chauntry Parkspace to enhance its parking pre-booking service at its principle international airport at Arlanda, Stockholm. As part of the same contract Chauntry will also install its technology to provide a parking pre-booking service to travellers at Gotëberg and Malmö Airports.
Arlanda required a sophisticated solution that offers customers a better service and range of products with the convenience of being able to manage their bookings on-line. The Airport also wants to more effectively yield on prices to improve space utilisation and revenue. Chauntry Parkspace was the obvious choice because all these features are standard.
As well as the booking engine and a consumer web-site, Chauntry will provide an XML API. This will allow LFV and 3rd parties, such as airlines, direct access to the booking engine through their own web front-end. This is an important first step for LFV in creating an on-line airport portal for booking a range of airport products and services in a single shopping basket transaction.
The new system at Arlanda is expected to go live in early June followed shortly after by Gotëberg and Malmö.
Thomas Cassel, Head of Commercial Business at Arlanda commented "We are very pleased to be working with Chauntry, who undoubtedly have a proven track record and can provide the sophisticated technology solution we require. We are keen have the best booking solution available for our new web site at Arlanda to ensure our customers have a choice of value-for-money parking products and services”.
“We are delighted to be delivering a pre-booking system to the LFV Group for its 3 main airports in Sweden. Our system will deliver customer service and commercial benefits LFV seek, with the capability to cross-sell and cross-promote other products” said Theresa Hughes, Chauntry’s Managing Director. I am sure our new client will be more than pleased with the flexibility and wide ranging functionality and more that our Parkspace system provides”.
The LFV Group consists of the State enterprise (Luftfartsverket) and its subsidiaries and associated companies. LFV operates 16 airports and is responsible for air navigation services in Sweden. In 2007 LFV reported sales of SEK 6.3 billion (575m Euros) and its operating profit was SEK 816 M (74m Euros). It employs just over 4,000 people.