Friday, November 1, 2013

Parking, Parking, and More Parking.

One such experience I can recall that reflects the standard principal agent model, is a time that I ran parking for one of the home Illini Football games.  I understand that I have related this setting to class concepts in the past, and the scene may be getting a little stale, but nonetheless, many of my experiences at the IHotel relate very well to topics of the course.  Thus, I shall reflect upon another aspect of my occupation that addresses the prompt for this week.

I have discussed previously about operations regarding parking for home football games that we conduct.  Because of this, I will not bore you with another detailed description behind our process.  Whilst I am on the clock, I answer to two principals, the conference center management and the customers.  This also applies to any parking scenario.  Our main objective is to park as many cars as possible, because the more cars we accommodate the more money the hotel receives.  The amount of money the managers turn in also reflects on how efficient they made the process.  Because of this, my superiors have a tendency to micromanage us in order to make sure we are doing our job to the best of our abilities.  We certainly don't want to fail in their eyes.

Besides making as much money as possible, it is our duty to maintain a friendly and fun atmosphere for those parking in the lot.  On game day, we want to assure everyone that their car will be safe, and provide them with whatever they need to make their tail gaiting a fun experience at the IHotel.  Often times, guests wish to take up more space than the managers appreciate, in order to set up their pre-game festivities.  This is where conflicts arise between myself, the agent, and the two principals.  Guests want more room, yet managers want more money.

The difficulty in this situation is when guests are asked to condense their tail-gait they often get angry.  They are there to appreciate the moments before kick off, surrounded by friends and family whose company they appreciate.  Whenever they take up more than one spot, my manager angrily commands us to enforce the one-spot per payment rule.  We have two options in this situation.  We can painstakingly ask them to move their stuff to a smaller area in front of their car, or explain to them that if they wish to take up an extra spot then they must pay an extra twenty dollars.  You can imagine their reaction when we ask them to pay more money on top of the steep twenty dollar fee required to park in the lot.

When I run into this dilemma, I almost always give in to the customer.  The only time I do not, is if the guest parks in such an absurd manner that it disrupts the entire flow of the parking operation.  I feel it is just easier this way.  Most of the people get extremely moody when asked to move their belongings or pay extra.  Some even get hostile, as which I witnessed one morning when I asked a patron to move his tent.  I do not wish to spoil anyone's good time.  Furthermore, I do not wish to constantly run into conflict with the guests, which happens about fifty percent of the time that I request tail-gaiting condensing.  In the end the hotel loses out on potential profit, but I feel since parking provides "free" money, then we can afford to lose some profit in order to satisfy the customers' needs.  That being adequate space for tail-gating.

Now by satisfying the customer, I do fail from my manager's perspective.  The guests are better off, yet we lost out on an increase in profit.  My boss also gets angry since it reflects somewhat poorly on him.  It is extremely hard to solve this issue.  Both parties will never be fully satisfied, and in order to make one better off, we have to make the other worse.  An increase in parking efficiency may assist in higher profits.  Yet, the guests will be unhappy with the small space they are provided to enjoy themselves.  The only way I see to solve this tension is to allow guests to park where they desire when the lot is empty, as long as they park in an orderly manner.  From here we can try to manage the space they inhabit during tail-gating.  Further instructions on the amount of room that guests receive for their entertainment should be provided upon entrance into the lot.  This way when visitors are confronted, they will be more understanding and reasonable.  Lastly, implementing more organization once the lot fills provides increases in customer satisfaction and parking efficiency.  In the end the situation is tricky.  My manager wants to squeeze as much cash out of this as he can.  However, by aiding the guests, I will  inevitably fail in the eyes of my superiors.

4 comments:

  1. I believe it will be beneficial for all three of you if Ihotel can make its regulations about parking space more clearly in advance instead of having you guys confronting with guests. If guests can know advance, they are more likely to manage their belongings and make all of your lives easier. Ihotel might not want to do that because it might lose some guests. However, I believe overally, Ihotel can gain much more profits and less conflicts.

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    1. Yes, that is what I have been trying to communicate to my manager and co-workers. There needs to be some sort of message conveyed to tailgaters that they cannot take up a ridiculous amount of space with their own equipment. The good thing though, is that a majority of the people who park in the lot for football games are not guests. The IHotel really loses no business from displeasing these people. Maybe they lose some potential future business, but they are not too concerned about this from what I gather.

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  2. On the overall economics of this, there is a tension about whether the lot ultimately fills or not. If the lot doesn't ultimately fill, the tailgaters have a point. If it does fill, then the tailgaters are being selfish.

    My experience on this (admittedly not perfect) is that I go to a tailgate that is in an Assembly Hall parking lot - the one on the northeast side of the Assembly hall. I believe it is a lot meant for high rollers or members or friends of the Athletic Association. That lot has been more than half empty when I've gone. We park at the iHotel and then walk over to the tailgate. We don't stay for the game. When the tailgate is winding down, we go home. The iHotel lot has been crowded at that time, but they are still letting cars in.

    A possible compromise is to encourage tailgaters into a certain area so you can get a count on how many there are. When the lot is nearing being full up then they could be warned about it and encouraged to reduce the space they are using. Until then, however, no warning.

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  3. I agree with you that when the lot is starting to fill up then it is a good time to start warning the tailgaters that they need to reduce the amount of space they are occupy. Every game that I have done parking the lot fills rather quickly. Sometimes it fills up earlier, depending on what time the game is. Every single time we have to turn away a lot of cars, sometimes maybe a hundred or more, because there is an insufficient amount of space to accommodate everybody that wishes to park in the lot.

    Keeping that in mind, and your comment about the tailgaters being selfish if the lot fills up, next time I won't be so hesitant to confront them.

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