Photo: sidewalk flyingThe City of Austin offers airport parking in three tiers, from garage ($20/day), to close-in surface ($10/day), to distant surface ($7/day). Frequent parkers accumulate points entitling them to free parking days.
The incentives for redeeming the points are bizarre:
Garage 2500 points
Close In 2500 points
Long Term 2500 points
The “price” of a free parking day is the same for the very desirable garage, where I’d never park if I have to pay $$, and for the close-in parking (where I park for $$ if staying fewer than 5 days) as well as for the long-term (where I park only if staying more than 4 days). Seeing this, we will redeem our 10,000 points for four days in the garage—parking for “free” anywhere else makes no sense. Now if the airlines would only charge the same number of frequent-flyer miles for a trip to Australia as they do for a trip to New York, I would be even better off!
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“…Frequent parkers accumulate points entitling them to free parking days.”
Daniel, you don’t say how the points are accumulated for parking.
Are points paid as a fraction of the charge (like my CC)? This would be fair, since the low-rent points are much harder to accumulate.
OTOH, perhaps this is a way of saying that you can park anywhere you darned well please if you have 2500 points…or a “clergy” sticker, etc.
Don’t you think it is a marketing trick ?
If you get incent to go to expensive parking with points (you will not go to the usual far-away parking for the same amount of points) then, you will have a taste of the luxurious parking (you wuold never had with your money first) and the next time you will park, you will think about the benefit to save some dollars and be far away or to have again this pleasure to park near the airport (or at least not at the far-away parking).
Don’t you think it is a way to invest on frequent parking users ?
This pricing scheme seems equivalent to Southwest Airlines’ old Rapid Rewards system, where you got 1.0 credit per flight and earned a free flight at 16 credits, all regardless of distance, although there was some price differentiation if you got a business select ticket. I used to fly often between Baltimore and Hartford for $60 each way, and then redeem my credits for flights to California. Sadly, they just changed it this March to a more traditional points structure where both earning and redeeming points is based on the price of the ticket. Maybe both Southwest and the Austin airport use this structure to build loyalty and win market share from the competition, assuming there are a number of other off-site lots in Austin.