All about business

The skies haven’t been too friendly lately to parking lot operators near Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

Soft demand for air travel has resulted in fewer people leaving fewer cars, and has forced public and private parking operators to adapt to tough times.

Last week, Lambert officials announced they would raise daily parking rates by $1 across the board after parking revenue took a plunge last year. Parking revenue at Lambert was $13.7 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, compared with $17.5 million in fiscal 2008, said airport spokesman Jeff Lea.

Airport Director Richard Hrabko said he hoped that move would generate about $4 million to $5 million a year.

But operators of the private parking lots that dot the mostly industrial area surrounding Lambert say they’ve taken different steps to deal with a downturn in air travel. Some have leased spaces to airport and airline employees, and stepped up promotions to put more cars in their lots.

Some have taken steps to keep their costs down.

"It’s tough. Very tough," said Daniel Adalberti, general manager at Skypark Airport Parking LLC in St. Ann. "The main thing we have done is adapt to the situation, and we have adapted by trying to provide the best value."

Skypark is situated just off Pear Tree Lane and boasts one of the lowest prices in the airport area — about $7 a day for self-park and $11.50 a day for valet parking. The only lower rate is Lambert’s economy lot at $6. But that will go to $7 when the new rates take effect Sept. 1.

Operators of the 2,000-space Skypark have occasionally dropped the daily self-park rates to $6 or lower.

With companies slashing their travel budgets, parking lot operators are courting the leisure traveler. And those customers tend to be driven more by the cost.

"Right now, price is king," said Tom Lombardi, president of AirportParkingReservations.com.

The Suffield, Conn., company helps travelers reserve parking spaces at privately run lots at 65 airports in the United States and Canada. Surveys have shown that price is a major factor for people who use the reservation site, followed by the lot’s location and security.

Lombardi said it "just blows my mind" that Lambert and other U.S. airports would raise parking fees in the face of a sluggish economy. Some private parking companies say the move could backfire on the airport and send more customers their way.

The airport prices going up "will cause some of the people to look a little bit more," said Henry Bullough, general manager at FastTrack Airport Parking no teletrack payday loan lenders. "A dollar doesn’t seem like much, but if you are going to be going for 10 days, it’s 10 bucks."

Demand for airport parking is driven largely by airline boardings, industry officials say. The Air Transport Association of America, an airline industry trade group, reported that June passenger boardings on U.S. airlines fell 6.5 percent this year, compared with the same month in 2008.

Bullough, like other parking managers, has seen a drop in customers during this recession. In the first quarter of 2009, he said, revenue was down about 15 percent from the same period last year. Meantime, people tend to be taking shorter trips, which has eaten into revenue per parked car.

FastTrack has been "a lot more prudent" with its costs, but there have been no layoffs in St. Louis, he said.

Mark Wildman, vice president of marketing at The Parking Spot, said the push now was to hang onto — and potentially increase — market share.

The Parking Spot and the Parking Spot 2 have not increased rates in the past year and a half, and it is "doubtful" that the company will raise rates next year, Wildman said. Customers still get a complimentary bottle of water and can participate in the "frequent parker" program.

But the company has done promotions to capture new customers, including a summer sale that offered up to 25 percent off parking rates for stays that included Saturday night.

"Everybody in every category is looking for a deal to make their dollar go farther," he said.

The Parking Spot has two locations and also operates EZ Park on a leased property. In all, that encompasses about 4,200 parking spaces.

Meantime, the company is doing what it can to hold down costs. It will soon run more fuel-efficient shuttles and has instituted a shuttle idling policy. Under that policy, if a shuttle is idling more than a minute it must be turned off. There has been a wage freeze, but no layoffs, Wildman said.

In the wake of travel slumps following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the latest recession, Skypark and other lots have provided monthly parking to airline employees and other Lambert workers. Skypark’s monthly rates range from $45 to $60.

"We basically look at it as if we had to wholesale half of our spaces just to at least keep them occupied," Adalberti said.

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