ABM Industries Partners with Smarking to Provide Chicago’s First Flexible Parking Experience
Updated: Dec 16, 2022
ABM Industries (ABM), a longtime Smarking partner, sought flexible and digital parking solutions to address the evolving needs of the “pandemic and post-pandemic parker.”
311 S Wacker, an ABM-Managed Garage Popular with SmartPass Users
Leveraging Smarking’s Industry Benchmark, ABM recognized three key trends accelerated by the pandemic:
Decline in Full Monthlies: As workers shifted to a hybrid Home/Office work schedule, many no longer needed or sought full monthly parking passes (see Figure 1)
Rise in Online Parking Reservations: Consumers increasingly purchased parking online in advance of arrival (see Figure 2)
Smartphones as an “Everything” Tool: Consumers became even more reliant on smartphones–and smartphone technologies such as QR codes–as physical goods (menus, parking passes, etc.) shifted to digital ones (see Figure 3)
Figure 1: North America Monthly Off-street Parking Transaction Volume Compared to 2019
(Data Source: Smarking Industry Benchmark)
The recovery of Fully Monthly parkers has lagged Transient parkers
Figure 2: North America Monthly Off-street Parking Online Sales Transaction Volume Compared to 2019
(Data Source: Smarking Industry Benchmark via partnership with Arrive/Flash)
Online transactions have been growing, with current volume 40% above pre-pandemic levels
Figure 3: Number of Smartphone Users in the U.S. Scanning a QR Code, 2019 - 2022 (Millions)
(Data Source: eMarketer)
The number of smartphone users scanning QR codes increased
from 52.6M in 2019 to 83.4M in 2022
In order to address these trends and consumer needs, ABM partnered with Smarking and launched SmartPass, a suite of flexible, digital parking passes purchasable online in seconds.
With SmartPass, ABM was able to create curated parking passes, ranging from single-day passes, single-session vouchers, flexible number-of-day passes, hotel overnight passes, and full monthly passes. They were also able to create tenant-specific parking passes purchasable and usable only by specific building tenant groups.
SmartPass seamlessly integrated with ABM’s PARCs providers, allowing customers to scan a QR code of their SmartPass upon arrival.