The Flash team arrived in Louisville for the International Parking & Mobility Institute’s annual conference this month ready to demonstrate how AI-powered technology is reshaping every touchpoint of the driver journey. From our innovative garage demonstrations to packed education sessions, one message resonated throughout: the future of parking is digital, data-driven, and already here.
Live Innovation: Seeing and Believing
The highlight of our IPMI presence was our off-site demonstration at a working garage nearby, where we welcomed over 75 attendees to experience firsthand how Vision, the only camera built for parking, and Express Pay, the only seamless parking experience that doesn’t risk revenue, transform the parking experience. We didn’t just talk about the future but showed it in action.
My enduring impression after speaking about our live showcase with Matt Perille, who led the event for Flash, was captured by his comment, “Seeing drivers go from 15 to 20 seconds for entry and exit to a seamless 3 seconds made believers out of skeptics.”
Even with challenging camera placements at high, steep, and off-center angles, Vision captured the data reliably every time. Beyond the metrics, watching drivers intuitively navigate the digital payments sequence with minimal prompting struck attendees as a clear signal the market is ready for this transformation.
Denver International Airport: Operating at Altitude and Scale
In our session with Denver International Airport, the DEN team led a masterclass in managing complexity at scale. With 51,000 spaces serving 7 million transactional parkers annually, DEN’s operation offers lessons for any facility navigating the digital transition.
The DEN team reinforced the point that successful digital transformation comes down to more than technology. It’s about solving real operational challenges and maintaining security while delivering a better driver experience.
That has meant decreasing passenger interactions in some places and increasing it in others. The ability for DEN passengers to access parking receipts online alone has reduced overall parking complaints by 30-40 percent. Similarly, the airport has achieved experience gains by freeing up team members from cash lanes to assist passengers elsewhere.
Designed to Repeat: The Modern Driver Journey
Brandywine’s Barry Lohr joined me for a session to explore how the connected driver journey has evolved from accident to intention in our industry’s digital transformation. Using our framework – recommendation, reservation, recognition, receipt, and repeat – we examined each touchpoint for owner and operator opportunities to capture value and build lasting customer relationships.
As I highlighted for attendees who joined our session, 85 million people are viewing parking locations that didn’t exist on Google Maps a year ago. A digital presence for parking facilities is imperative.
Among the topics we covered in the session, the following insights seemed to resonate most:
- AI readiness starts with data accuracy: As search platforms shift to AI-first experiences, your facility data becomes your digital foundation.
- Digital payments unlock customer relationships: 80 percent of drivers willingly share contact information when paying digitally.
- Recognition technology has reached an inflection point: Modern AI-powered parking cameras do more than read plates – they understand context, patterns, and behavior.
Building Tomorrow’s Infrastructure Today
The conference corridors buzzed with enlightening discussions about digital operations, and in the Flash booth, revolved around how our industry gets there from here. Our conversations have moved past ‘if’ to ‘how’ and ‘how soon’ for digital transformations of facilities with an appetite for change matched by urgency. No facility seeks to remain reliant solely on paper tickets and accidental parking when their peers offer integrated, seamless digital experiences.
We returned to Austin from Louisville with three industry priorities top of mind:
- Get the digital foundation right: accurate online listings, real-time inventory, and flexible pricing capabilities;
- Meet drivers where they are: integration with navigation apps, digital payment options, and mobile-first experiences; and
- Use data to drive decisions: from pricing optimization to understanding customer patterns, data transforms operations.
The path forward is clear: parking facilities that embrace digital transformation today will capture tomorrow’s value, and the industry’s already shifting into high gear.
