Smart Parking : Global fitness giant Les Mills will soon be able offer their customers a free and easy way to park at their central Auckland gym.

Les Mills' flagship club has been an institution in inner city Auckland since 1986, and its cutting edge fitness classes coupled with the best quality workout machines and equipment have seen its impressive membership numbers increase year on year.

Les Mills recognised the need to provide free parking facilities to their loyal members while they're working out at the gym, but as the car park in question is also used by members of the general public the difficulty arose on how to effectively allow genuine gym members to access free parking, while other casual parkers are still free to pay for their parking requirements as usual.

Smart Parking put together a proposal with a solution that was simple, robust and smart.

Along with an installation of overhead guidance sensors that affords motorists a quick and easy view of available bays, as well as directional LED signage letting them know how many spaces are free on which level, we also tailored our SmartCloud platform and Smart Parking app to work in with Les Mills' membership system.

Essentially, we would harness the power of our Smart Parking app, and the gym would notify all its members that the parking system was changing, and encourage them to install the Smart Parking app onto their phones via the Apple or Google Play app stores.

Once installed, gym members will enter the same email address they use for their Les Mills membership as well as details such as their vehicle registration number and payment details. On arrival at the car park, all a member needs to do is open the app, select the gym car park and enter the bay number they have parked in. They will have the option of selecting the free 90 minutes, or longer if they wish, then once they swipe in at the gym their parking will be validated.

If a member opts to stay for longer than 90 minutes they can extend their session and become a standard casual user of the facility.

This clever solution was immediately seen by Les Mills as the sensible way to provide free parking to their members while controlling any abuse of parking space and still allowing access to the car park by the general public.

Les Mills were also suitably impressed that our system employs open source technology and can therefore be easily integrated into the current system. Once the member swipes in at the gym their valid details will be sent automatically to the encrypted Smart Parking integration API, and their 90 minutes free parking will be automatically enacted.

We believe this willingness to engage in an open sharing of resources is one of the things that sets Smart Parking apart from our competitors, and look forward to working with Les Mills to improve their customer experience.

Rebecca Grainger, Smart Parking's NZ National Sales Manager, says "This project was an exciting one from the get go as it presented Smart Parking with a completely new set of challenges. Smart Parking's development team got to step in earlier in the piece than usual, and enjoyed working with Les Mills to figure out a solution that enabled them to offer their members a superior parking journey in a busy inner city location."