As parking transaction volume begins to return to pre-COVID levels, the key questions remain:
• How will COVID change long-term consumer behavior?
• What does the future of parking look like?
Join us as ParkMobile’s Jeff Perkins, Chief Marketing and Product Officer; and Brad Goldman, VP Marketing Insights & Analytics, discuss the data trends that the company has observed over the past year. We’ll also share the results from a recent consumer research study about expected changes to consumer mobility habits in the future.
COVID-19 has had a major impact on the parking industry. In March 2020, as the pandemic came to America, the nation shut down and parking volumes declined by 80 percent in only a few weeks. In April, transactions began to gradually increase as the recovery began. For several months in the middle of 2020, it appeared that parking transactions were trending back to pre-COVID levels. In the late fall, COVID-19 cases started to spike and continued rising through the end of 2020 and into 2021. Data shows that as COVID-19 cases grew, people were going out less often, and parking transactions started to trend back down. As we enter 2021, volumes have yet to reach their pre-COVID levels.
However, as the number of fully vaccinated people in the U.S. increases, according to the experts, we expect to be on the other side of the virus by fall 2021. As the COVID-19 vaccine gets distributed, we will see a return to normalcy. We will have to wait and see when parking volumes return to pre-COVID levels. But after almost a year in the darkness, we are now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Offices will re-open. Commuters will return to cities. The parking industry will be back.
And there’s good reason to believe it will be bigger and better than ever before. In a 2020 research study, we asked consumers how they believe COVID will change their future behavior. The respondents said they expect to use public transportation much less often and use their personal vehicle more often. That means more cars on the road and more demand for parking.
To prepare for this upcoming influx of cars hitting urban areas, our team has been busy creating innovative new solutions, making it easier to find and pay for parking than ever before.
Learning Objectives:
1- RECENT COVID-19 PARKING TRENDS: What ParkMobile has observed regarding parking transaction volume, including what areas have seen an uptick in light of states reopening.
2- COVID-19 CONSUMER SURVEY RESULTS: How consumers are thinking about mobility and parking now, and how they expect their behavior and mobility use to change.
3- FUTURE PREDICTIONS: Based on research and data, we will provide parking predictions for the next few years.
