ParkJockey was recently featured in the July/August 2014 edition of Parking magazine. Listed under “Industry Newsmakers”, Parking magazine highlights the app’s “One Touch” experience, its ability to sync with personal calendars and adjust based on customer preferences.
Pick up a copy today and read all about it!
On the 7th August ParkJockey will be attending ‘A Night in White’, an event hosted by Yelp at the Radisson Blu Portman Hotel, Marble Arch – in honour of their 10th Birthday. The ballroom bash will encapsulate and promote the finest local London edibles and drinkables.
Attendees will be dressed to impress in their finest white attire – without a belt and with their dancing shoes on, because there is going to be a whole host of delicious food and drink all on the house.
ParkJockey will be amongst those providing the entertainment. Ben Barnett AKA The Sax Man taking centre stage at our stand with added complimentary beer and bubbles.
We will also be showcasing our mobile app, handy for all drivers who need to find & book parking in advance or on-the-go!
Click here to find out more the event and who will be attending, you can even RSVP if you would like to attend.
ParkJockey is thrilled to announce its working partnership with City Car Club.The partnership has a strong synergy to make driving into the big smoke as convenient and hassle-free as possible. Simply book your City Car Club car, drive to your destination and park your car seamlessly in Central London using ParkJockey.
It is a touchy subject, but one that shouldn’t be avoided. It’s a topic that may have slipped underneath the radar. Until recently, some members of the public have been voicing their opinion about, how much money the government are trying to sponge out of us. The question that sparks the current debate is – “Should the NHS charge patients and visitors for parking at hospitals?”
Car parking is an archaic industry and it has been around for over a hundred years. With many car parks around, it is a known fact that the industry is a larg one, reiterated by the fact that the European parking industry valued at around 30 billion euros.
Parking is what may come. Some places are free to park, some places charge. Through research by ParkJockey London we know that some car parks charge £55 for up to 5 hours (Harrod’s). Prices of car parks vary and can be collectively or individually dependant on the purpose for parking, the consumer demographic, the location and/or demand.
What would be you say the purpose of parking for visiting hospital is?
An emergency, visiting loved ones, a general check up?
Should you be charged for parking when it could be a matter of life or death?
Yes or No?
It is known that the NHS charge their visitors and even their patients to park their car. The past few years has seen a escalation in parking charges in hospitals. It has been denoted in a recent review by the BBC, that 1 in 4 hospital car parks have doubled with some having even tripled their rates for the coming year.
When the BBC carried out an investigation into this, they approached the general public at hospital car parks to which they unanimously responded that prices are too steep, some in the region of “£4 per hour” Some people have resorted to taking public transport to the hospital, which isn’t and doesn’t sound convenient in the slightest, not to mention good for public health in the case of contagious diseases.
Charging visitors and/or patients seems over the top, especially when you are coming to hospital to visit a loved one, or have an appointment yourself, you do not want the added stress of parking your car and keeping an eye on time. Just today, a lady named Lesley Macguire, 59, had been having tests in her local hospital in Aberdeenshire, following problems with her implants to fight breast cancer from 22 years ago. She was then diagnosed with cancer again, only to return to her car to find a £40 parking ticket (PCN).
This doesn’t seem fair, and people want to know what the money is being spent on. One Tory MP suggests parking charges need to be abolished; he even brands it as a ‘stealth tax’ (A stealth tax is a tax imposed in a way that is unrecognised as a tax). The NHS make millions of pounds every year from parking, and need millions to provide the service they give. For example, a hospital in the North east of England reportedly made around a £2 million last year from their car park. With around 2,000+ NHS hospitals in the UK, the accumulative total is in the hundreds of millions. The NHS argue that this money is used and extremely beneficial for them in order to support the medical challenges that they face throughout the year – patients are their priority!
What do you think will happen if they were to slash prices?
Could hospital car parks be filled with commuters and shoppers thus leaving patients and visitors left circling for parking?
Have you ever been in a car and looked to the left or right and wondered why the hell is that person doing whatever they are doing, whilst driving!?
Well, we ParkJockey decided to carry out a survey of 1,000 participants and quizzed them on their driving habits. The results were pretty astonishing!
1. Eating food (47 %)
2. Singing really loudly (44 %)
3. Listening to a guilty pleasure (28 %)
4. Talking on the phone (21 %)
5. Driving barefoot (21 %)
6. Picking their nose (19 %)
7. Driving in pyjamas (18 %)
8. Driving in high-heels (15 %)
9. Updating Facebook status (12 %)
10. Taking a selfie (11 %)
Now the first few seem fairly innocuous and palpable, however as you work your way down the list – namely no.10, it just gets absurd and I wouldn’t recommend it either – it’s dangerous!
Let’s just hope their not taking selfies whilst listening their guilty pleasure, especially this …
You can find the articles here on London24, which has a monthly unique visitor count of around 800,000, This Is Local London online, News Shopper online, News Shopper print edition, and it also appeared in The Metro last week if you managed to catch it. There is also a surprise in there that you will not believe! Hint: fake tan!
Last time we gave you ‘The Commitments‘ this time we are giving away 2 tickets to ‘Les Miserables’ @ The Queens Theatre, West-End. The winner could be you, all you have to do is book with us or enter free by sending us your name, address & telephone number to our address, from now until the 25th July 2014. Good luck!
T&C’s apply.
5 years ago to this day we lost an entertainer, an influencer, a king … Michael Jackson.
He blessed us with many toe-tapping greats, from ‘Thriller’ to ‘Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough,’ his music has been and is influential to the music industry to this very day.
There is one song that sticks in my mind though – ‘Beat It!’ The repetitive tuneful lyrics are so catchy you can sing the words over and over again in any country and will be recognised by all…
So if you are rushing to an event and you’re scared you are running out of time, don’t worry because pre-booking with ParkJockey will ensure you win the fight against time and space!
Ok fine…there really isn’t much of a connection between this King of Pop and Parking, but hey, visit www.parkjockey.com and ‘Beat them to it!’
He he!
ParkJockey founder and CEO, Umut Tekin, is at it again – spreading the word about ParkJockey! Previously on prime time morning TV with CNBC, this time, he’s speaking with Axel Threlfall of Reuters on the Road. In this interview, Umut gives a great explanation on how ParkJockey uses predictive analytics to provide more intelligent parking spot recommendations to its users. He also gives some insight into ParkJockey’s larger plans. Check out the full interview below or click here.
See Also: ParkJockey Receives Business Innovation Award
Earlier this week, our very own CTO, Philippe Saint-Just, was interviewed by Mobile Entertainment (ME), along with other thought-leaders in the mobile community. This is the second time ParkJockey has been featured here, the first being given the crown of App of the Day.
The topic of this was, ‘Apple’s introduction of iOS8’. Here were his thoughts:
“The updates to notifications, widgets and lock screen apps will increase the fluidity of information and reduce the number of steps required to take action – ultimately, translating to better user engagement.
Since some of these features already exist on Android, this will allow app developers to align the products more closely on iOS and Android platforms. We also look very positively on the introduction of Swift. By reducing the learning curve for developers and allowing them to focus less on low level programming and more on feature development, we expect to see drops in costs and shorter development cycles.”
See Also: ParkJockey now integrated with Apple Passbook
Europe’s largest parking exhibition this year was held at Kensington Olympia. ParkJockey as mentioned in the previous blog was located at Stand F34. The weather was perfect, far to hot to be stuck inside, however the exhibition on the whole was a resounding success.
ParkEx state that they ‘believe in the value of meeting face to face.’ As cliché as this may sound they hit the nail perfectly on the head. We were unsure of the attention we would get but with a expertly decorated stand, to catch the eye of the parking world, and the eye catching popcorn machine the conversations were popping off in each corner.
We had the opportunity to meet an array of influential people in the parking industry and lay the foundations for future relationships in order to fuel our rapid growth in the parking world. People were thoroughly impressed with our solution but now the real work starts… See you again in 2015 bigger and better! Check out our video highlights below…