This post is a case study about how industry leader Colonial Airport Parking grew online sales by 197% and revenue by 35% in the first 30 days of using Ocra for centralized demand channel management.
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About Colonial Airport Parking
Established in 1956, Colonial Parking is a full-service parking operator that operates 40+ locations in Delaware and Pennsylvania and parks more than 45,000 patrons daily.
A division of Colonial Parking, Colonial Airport Parking, services the bustling Philadelphia International Airport.
Colonial Parking is distinctive in the industry in that they are large enough to employ the latest technology yet small enough to offer individual attention and a highly personalized customer experience.
The Situation
When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Colonial Airport Parking identified the need to utilize more demand channels that facilitate contactless entry and exit to provide a safe environment for their patrons.
This would inspired customer confidence and grow loyalty, which directly results in repeat business.
But the addition of new customer demand channels would require Colonial Airport Parking to carve out more time every day to log into each demand channel’s proprietary platform to configure and manage rates, blackouts, and more.
It also adds a new source of data and reporting that needs to be consolidated and reconciled with all of the other demand channel reports in order to get the 360-degree view of transaction and occupancy activity that’s mandatory for maximizing yield.
The Solution
Colonial Airport Parking was incredibly proactive in finding a solution for pre-addressing any operational complications that could arise as a result of scaling with new demand channels.
They identified the need for a centralized “command center” for controlling rates, inventory, blackouts, and more across all of their demand channels, so they could offer more solutions that enabled contact-less payments without adding extra work for their team.
To accomplish this, Colonial Airport Parking chose to partner with Ocra – the industry’s first and only centralized management platform for parking operators that massively reduces the amount of time they spend on managing their current demand channels and makes it painless to scale with new ones.
The results within 30 days: top-line growth and stronger margins!
- 35% increase in overall revenue
- 197% increase in online sales
- 75% reduction in the amount of time needed to manage all demand channels
Why Colonial Airport Parking transformed their approach to sales channel management:
- Needed to sell more, but without adding more work
- Adding demand channels is great for top-line revenue growth, but the incremental time that it takes to set up and manage everything quickly erodes margins.
- For instance, there is clear value in adjusting prices for a holiday such as Thanksgiving when there is a surge in travelers, but logging into a multitude of systems and sitting on hold with account reps inevitably impacts results due to delays and the amount of work required.
- Adding demand channels is great for top-line revenue growth, but the incremental time that it takes to set up and manage everything quickly erodes margins.
- Wanted to innovate while staying lean
- A core value of Colonial Airport Parking is being large enough to use the latest technology, but small enough to offer individual attention to their customers.
- To deliver on this value proposition, Colonial Airport Parking knew that it was important to provide patrons with additional contactless payment options that accommodated their changing expectations and behavior.
- The difficult part was managing each of these fragmented technologies to provide a consistent customer experience – which is why they decided to partner with Ocra to be able to manage all of them in one place.
- A core value of Colonial Airport Parking is being large enough to use the latest technology, but small enough to offer individual attention to their customers.
- Lacked a central place for actionable data
- Without a single place to analyze data, see trends, and make corresponding optimizations, the team spent an unsustainable amount of time downloading, consolidating, compiling, analyzing and then deriving insights into how the facility was performing.
- Once this was all put together, there was still not a guarantee whether everything was accurate and up-to-date, making it difficult to land on a data-driven decision.
- From there, they’d have to go through the laborious tasks of making adjustments.
- Without a single place to analyze data, see trends, and make corresponding optimizations, the team spent an unsustainable amount of time downloading, consolidating, compiling, analyzing and then deriving insights into how the facility was performing.
Investing in centralized channel management
With Ocra, Colonial Airport Parking manages more customer demand channels while spending a mere 25% of the time than previously required.
Getting real-time insights in a single dashboard allows them to make adjustments to rates and availability on the fly, not based on lagging data, and has led to top-line growth and stronger margins.
- Driving more revenue
- With Ocra, Colonial Airport Parking now sells across four channels, markets to more patrons than ever before, and is in full control of their rates. They can now adjust prices across all channels with a single click.
- In addition, Colonial Airport Parking is able to allocate all their available inventory into a pool, encouraging each channel to sell as many spots as possible. During this time, they saw an overall 197% bump in online sales.
- With Ocra, Colonial Airport Parking now sells across four channels, markets to more patrons than ever before, and is in full control of their rates. They can now adjust prices across all channels with a single click.
- Successfully scaling with new demand channels
- Colonial Airport Parking leveraged Ocra’s automation and integration capabilities to onboard a new channel that increased revenue by 35% in the first month. This channel and each of their other channels are performing exceptionally well.
- And the best part is that all four are able to be managed in less time than it previously took to manage just one!
- Colonial Airport Parking leveraged Ocra’s automation and integration capabilities to onboard a new channel that increased revenue by 35% in the first month. This channel and each of their other channels are performing exceptionally well.
- Making data actionable
- With Ocra, Colonial Airport Parking now has one single source of truth for real-time sales metrics by channel and can optimize rates and course-correct, as needed.
- From within their analytics dashboard, team members can instantly see how many reservations are arriving and departing each day while also seeing the current inventory.
- With Ocra, Colonial Airport Parking now has one single source of truth for real-time sales metrics by channel and can optimize rates and course-correct, as needed.
Interested in seeing results like this for your business?
Check out how Ocra serves parking operators with features for widespread inventory distribution, one-click rate management, advanced permissioning, and centralized reporting and analytics. To set up a call, fill out this short form or email our CEO, Ethan, at ethan@getocra.com.
