You’re not thinking about car parks but here’s why you should
Every refurbishment is designed to impress but how many of your valued guests enter through the car park?
Consider this: when they arrive at your car park do they get the same feeling of first class facilities and service?
Could guests arriving at your car park be faced with confusing traffic flow, poor signage, unclear space allocation, faulty parking equipment, dirty? Neglected with a total absence of service? Or even worse, is your car park unsafe?
It is essential that accommodation property car parks, however large or small, are carefully planned, signed, properly maintained and are regularly updated with technology to meet current standards. The involvement of an industry professional is important.
“Hotels and resort car parks are very different to the usual car parks in commercial or retail centres,” said Peter Stewart. He is the managing director of InterPark that advertises itself as ‘the one stop car park shop’ and is an “industry leader in providing a full range of car parking services”.
He explained, “To start with, visitors to hotels and resorts are normally very infrequent guests visiting the particular hotel once or twice a year, if they are lucky. In hotel and resorts then, simple logical traffic flow and clear signage is particularly important to avoid guests becoming frustrated.”
Check out the current issue of Resort News to read the full article.
For properties that are being developed, having an expert on board at the car park design stage is vital. Mr Stewart advised on the design of the 2500 space Sydney Casino car park and observed, “Even the most basic design essentials such as having boom gates located on a straight section of driveway are often ignored. The result is that drivers can have enormous difficulty reaching the access control equipment. Another essential is having the right relationship between the width of the parking bays and the width of the aisles.”
In older hotel car parks there is still much that can be done to make the guest experience as pleasant as possible with clear consistent signage and straight forward logical traffic flow. According to Mr Stewart there is a huge variety of parking control equipment on the market to meet the needs of all types of car parks from small motels to the most luxurious resorts. Equipment can vary from low tech, such as cable gates and remote controlled bollards to high tech long range readers, licence plate recognition systems and pay-by-phone technology.
“It is crucial that any accommodation provider gets the right advice on the type of equipment to meet their needs and their budget,” he advised. “There is such a wide variety in the types of equipment. Quality, reliability and back up service are essential and car park owners need to receive the right advice,” he said.
With accommodation car parks having to operate 24/7, lighting can have significant operating costs but in the current market there is a wide variety of energy efficient lighting options. As with so many new technologies, they do vary greatly in their cost and effectiveness and it is important to know how to assess product quality.
Tony Arhanic is sales executive for enLighten Australia, an award winning company that was formed to design and supply highly efficient, intelligent lighting using LED technology. He advised, “In high use car park lighting applications, the robustness of the light fittings, light quality, reliability and ease of maintenance are paramount.”
LED lighting offers significant opportunities for up to 90 per cent energy cost savings and longer maintenance cycles. Motion sensors installed into LED light fittings allow for the operation at a lower light output, hence lower energy consumption, when there is no movement detected in the space. Maintenance benefits include easy battery replacement in emergency lights without the need to isolate the power.
Mr Arhanic reports on the recent results from the car park lighting upgrade at the Marriott Resort & Spa, Surfers Paradise using the Chamaeleon LED light: “The engineering manager was delighted with the 84 per cent energy savings and improved light quality, when replacing the ageing T8 fluorescent batten lighting.
“Lighting and ventilation can have very significant operating costs but in the current market there are a wide variety of energy saving devices along with energy efficient lighting options. As with so many new technologies they do vary greatly in their cost and effectiveness and it is important to get the right advice from the experts.”
Guests need to be safe and secure and so careful planning needs to go into the selection and placement of security cameras and systems. The design should aim to protect against vandalism and theft, prevent cars exiting without paying and most importantly to make guest feel cocooned and safe within their chosen accommodation.
AccomNews is not affiliated with any government agency, body or political party. We are an independently owned, family-operated magazine.
