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Are you curious if your parking lot or garage could make more money? Many property owners and real estate asset managers suspect their parking facility is underperforming, but they can’t pinpoint where lost revenue is hiding. Is it tied to pricing? Occupancy? Visibility?
We’ve learned from managing hundreds of facilities that most parking assets aren’t reaching their full revenue potential. When AirGarage takes over management, we typically see a 23 percent increase in Net Operating Income (NOI) in the first year.
So what can you do if your property is leaving money on the table?
It starts with measuring your facility's performance against industry benchmarks. Then you can apply proven strategies like dynamic pricing and targeted marketing to unlock missed revenue. Finally, you can reduce operating expenses and get better visibility into performance data across your parking asset with better reporting and insights.
We walk through each of these steps in more detail below, including best practices and tips learned from first-hand experience.
The first step in boosting revenue is knowing what your facility could and should be generating. Too many owners set parking rates based on rough estimates rather than data. But this approach won't help you compete long term. A better method is to calculate “revenue per parking space,” which shows how much income each stall in your garage is generating.
Revenue per parking space is a simple way to see if your asset is truly performing, and it’s also key when evaluating opportunities to invest in a parking lot or garage.
To make this a bit more concrete, let's use a 200-space downtown parking garage as our example when walking through these calculations step by step.
This basic calculation shows how much income each parking space generates on a monthly basis, giving you a clear baseline for performance comparison.
Here’s the monthly formula:
-> Monthly Revenue per Parking Space = Total monthly revenue ÷ Number of spaces
Let’s run this using our example:
The annual figure proves more useful for investment decisions and financial planning, since most property owners think about returns on a yearly basis.
Here’s the annual formula:
Annual Revenue per Parking Space = Total annual revenue ÷ number of spaces
And if we calculate this again with our example:
These formulas give you a clearer picture of performance over different periods of time. Once you've calculated your current revenue per parking space, compare it against market norms.
The most valuable benchmark is always local competitors (i.e., the garages and lots your customers would choose instead of yours). You can also quickly scan apps like SpotHero, ParkWhiz, or Parkopedia to see rates posted in nearby areas.
Here are just a few things to check when you’re looking at the local competition:
General industry trends can also be a helpful gut check:
This research gives you a clear picture of your competitive position and what local drivers expect to pay.
The revenue per space figures you calculated earlier show what you're actually earning, but they might not tell the full story. Sometimes there's a gap between what your rates suggest you should be earning and what actually hits your bank account.
Understanding occupancy helps you find these gaps and their causes.
You can use your revenue per space numbers with occupancy data to assess two critical opportunities: revenue locked up in higher occupancy levels, and revenue gaps from operational inefficiencies.
Here's how to calculate your theoretical revenue potential based on current occupancy patterns:
Revenue Opportunity = (Spaces × Average Occupancy × Average Daily Rate × Days) – Actual Revenue
Example (200 space garage):
This $6,800 gap could reveal operational inefficiencies from inconsistent rate application, poor enforcement and collection, or other issues. By raising the occupancy level in your formula, you can also see how higher usage will directly impact revenue.
Altogether, this quick occupancy analysis reveals both immediate fixes and longer-term growth potential that you can pursue through the strategies covered in the following sections.
For a fast and simpler analysis of your lot's potential, AirGarage offers a practical parking asset audit to find performance gaps and suggest improvements to maximize revenue.
It’s important to remember that price increases aren’t the only way to drive revenue gains. Growth or better performance can come from multiple paths, including pricing smarter, attracting more drivers, lowering expenses, and structuring your management agreements so your upside is not capped.
We walk through each method in the following sections.
Many owners stick to one flat rate for every driver. The problem is that demand isn’t flat - it shifts by time of day, day of week, seasons, and more. That means a “safe” rate and simple pricing approach could actually leave a lot of money on the table.
Dynamic parking pricing responds to demand in real time, adjusting rates so that busy times generate stronger returns, while slower times attract more drivers. Real‑world examples show that facilities adopting dynamic pricing often see a 20–40 percent increase in revenue as demand is priced more accurately, both in parking-specific case studies and across transportation and mobility sectors.
While dynamic pricing is becoming more common in the parking industry, one mistake facilities often make is using a pricing approach that’s too basic. For example, charging one rate during the day and a different one at night. While this responsive or pre-set pricing change might be better than nothing, this kind of adjustment rarely produces meaningful uplift. Dynamic pricing has different levels of sophistication, and only the more advanced methods deliver the full benefit.
We’ve written two resources to help owners understand this concept and how it relates to their facility:
Dynamic pricing is one of the clearest ways to unlock more from the spaces you already have.
Many garages and lots lose revenue simply because drivers don’t know they exist, and they don’t show up where drivers are searching. A street sign or a low-ranked Google Maps listing is not enough to capture attention. While hotels, restaurants, and shops all invest in visibility, parking is rarely marketed with the same discipline, leaving spaces empty.
The good news is that effective marketing in parking doesn’t require a massive budget. A few straightforward changes can significantly increase occupancy:
Even small steps can make a difference. For example, in one pricing optimization project, AirGarage helped a downtown facility increase revenue by 32 percent in the first six months simply by improving pricing and marketing visibility, which quickly translated to higher occupancy.
In another case, the Buccini Pollin Group partnered with AirGarage to modernize management across multiple garages, implementing new technology and marketing strategies that delivered significant revenue lift in the first year.
For a deeper dive into how we remove the marketing burden for owners and improve performance, see our full guide to parking marketing strategies.
Lowering your operating costs is a direct way to improve NOI without changing demand. Many lots and garages are weighed down by unnecessary recurring costs and cobbled systems. With the right tools, owners can often save thousands each year. Below are some of the most common ways we’ve seen and helped owners regain wasted revenue:
Even with better pricing, stronger marketing, and lower operating costs, your parking facility’s revenue is only as flexible as your management agreement. If your operator simply leases the property from you for a fixed amount every month, your income is capped. Under this agreement, your operator keeps the upside. If they double performance, you see none of it.
Working with a management partner under a revenue-sharing model removes that cap. Instead of a flat lease, income is tied directly to the actual performance of your facility. When occupancy rises, marketing pays off, or dynamic pricing increases yield, those improvements boost your bottom line too.
AirGarage uses this approach to align incentives with owners. You share in the benefits of any improvements, rather than leaving gains in the operator’s hands. For a full breakdown of how different agreements compare, read our article on parking management agreements.
Traditional parking management is often fragmented, expensive, and designed to benefit operators more than owners. From outdated gates, clunky payments, and weak enforcement, to opaque leases that cap upside, the system is broken.
AirGarage replaces those disjointed parts with a single, modern operating system that brings together technology, enforcement, transparent reporting, and incentive-aligned agreements. The result is higher revenue for owners without the hidden fees or unnecessary costs that have held parking assets back.
