Every city in the world faces the trouble of managing parking spaces. Yes, the number of people who own a car goes up every year. Not just that, the population of people who own multiple cars is increasing as well. However, the real issue is not the lack of parking spaces; it is about not having a better parking management solution to connect parking spaces to simplify parking management. A peer-peer platform that connects car owners with local businesses or homeowners with spare parking spaces.
How does it work?
The approach of parking slot rentals is based on Airbnb’s business model, which connects travelers with hosts who want to rent out their living space. Similarly, the peer-peer parking space rental business model connects drivers and locals (either businesses or homeowners) looking to rent out their parking spaces for a specific duration.
It works in this way-
Parking space owners set specific hours and rates and car owners can reserve slots ahead of time. This decreases the time spent looking for vacant parking slots and makes the parking slot management simple. To develop a parking lot of parking management software, you must understand how it works from a user’s point of view.
Essential features of a customized parking system
Parking system app development requires a set of basic and advanced features. Let’s have a look at the basic feature set for a car parking management software.
Features for parking space owners
Signup and login–
Signup and login feature allows car owners to access the system and helps to store the information and identify as a unique user everything they enter in the system.
Personal profile–
This is the space for the users to add their personal information, car details, and other related information.
Search filters–
Users must be able to search the available parking spaces, time slots, under certain geo-locations, etc.
Booking system–
Once a user has found a desirable slot, he/she must be able to reserve the space and get an access code in return.
Payment system–
Users must be able to park for the services through a secure payment gateway or pay later by cash.
Features for parking space owners
Signup and login–
This feature allows parking space owners to register and access the system.
Personal profile–
Parking space owners can create a user profile by adding their personal information and the information about the parking slot, add the description and picture, add pricing details and availability details.
User dashboard–
Parking space owners can use the dashboard to edit or change the availability of the spaces, add or delete pictures, and add some analytics regarding the parking space business.
Reviews and ratings–
Car owners can rate parking spaces and leave reviews about the same.
Chat–
Chat functionality allows parking space owners and car owners to communicate with each other.
The revenue model of parking rental apps
Like any other on-demand business model, an on-demand parking space management system also generates revenue through the following ways.
Commission
The parking slot management system deducts a fixed percentage of the amount as a commission from the total reservation fee from all users. This is how every parking lot system makes money.
Transaction fee
A small percentage of the fee is deducted from parking slot owners the payments are processed.
Premium memberships
Parking systems can also charge car owners for a premium membership and offer unique benefits like giving priority access to parking spaces.
Building a car parking lot management marketplace from scratch
When building a parking slot management app from scratch, there are many functions to incorporate from navigation to online payments. To build an efficient software, you must have an excellent business plan.
Here are some of the common ways in which a parking lot app can be created.
Navigation and booking
This type of app lets users find and reserve parking solutions. The app will also help the drivers to navigate to the booked place. A flexible payment system is also essential for this type of parking app, as users prefer to pay by debit/credit cards or in cash. Features, like adding extra parking time or navigating back to a car space, can also be included. This business model is the most popular among existing parking apps.
Fully functional parking slot management app
Developing parking slot management apps with a full set of functionalities require more effort, time and are more expensive. An efficient parking software keeps tracks of every essential information like vehicle license number, car details with photos, and visitor names in the user dashboard or parking space owners. It also offers functionalities for real-time navigation, to manage time limits for visitors, manage both free and paid parking hours, manage inventories, offer easy payment options, etc.
Build a mobile-first responsive design for your parking rental system. Compare what is required for small screens and bigger screens separately and design the system based on that. User experience is important for such apps as the success of the system lies in how a person feels when interacting with it. Focus on offering an impressive user experience that helps you improve brand loyalty, better conversions, and an increase in customers.
Other basic features of the parking app
GPS Tracking
To make the parking lot management easy to use, incorporating GPS tracking is essential. This allows car owners to find the location of the parking space and find the distance to the nearest parking lot.
Search
The search process is probably the most important feature of a parking app. It must be easy to use, intuitive to offer the nearest available parking slots in one button click.
Booking
Booking features allow car owners to reserve a parking slot and to prepay for the say on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This allows for avoiding the trouble of booking the same slot every day again.
Price comparison
Car parking rental apps also offer an opportunity for users to compare prices and find the cheapest nearby parking spaces. Offers can also be given to users if booked in advance.
Is building the car parking rental app from scratch a feasible option?
If you want to build software for parking management from scratch, it takes around 3000 hours approximately to complete the entire project. If you take the average hourly rate for developers at $50 per hour, the cost will start from $50,000 and it can go up higher.
Building a parking lot management system from scratch is not a feasible idea when there are other better alternatives in the market. Parking rental website scripts are designed specifically to manage parking spaces of different sizes and it comes with all essential features just like a rental marketplace like Airbnb. A customized Airbnb clone script can do the entire job easily, quickly and more affordably.
Conclusion
Apps for parking lot management are the future. Despite the increasing number of parking apps, there is potential in the market. A smart parking management system on the Airbnb model can be a huge time saver for both car owners and parking space owners. Once you identify the existing problems in the industry and offer unique solutions to overcome it, you can take your business to new heights. Offer extra services to your users so that you can earn an additional revenue flow from the same system.
