How to Compare Two Airport Parking Lots in Ten Minutes

Search for airport parking comparisons and you get price tables. Rate, rate, rate, maybe a star rating averaged across four hundred strangers with different trips than yours. The rate is the easiest thing to compare, which is why everyone compares it, and it is rarely why someone regrets their choice.

Here is a scorecard you can run on any two lots in about ten minutes.

The eight questions

1. What will I actually pay per day?

Not the headline. The number after codes, fees, and taxes, for the dates you are traveling. Some operators advertise a rate and add facility fees at checkout. Some quote low for midweek and reprice weekends.

The useful comparison is total cost for your actual trip length, divided by days. Our corporate code bills a flat $16.95 a day against a posted $25 to $30, and flat means the Sunday of a holiday weekend costs the same as a Tuesday in February.

2. How often does the shuttle leave?

This is the question that decides your morning, and the one most lots are quietest about.

A 10-minute headway means an expected wait around five minutes. A 30-minute headway means you either plan your departure around a schedule or you stand in a lot with your bags. Across a year of travel, that difference is hours.

Ours runs every 10 minutes. If a lot will not tell you its frequency, that is itself the answer.

3. Does it run when my flight actually is?

Business travel happens at unglamorous hours. A 6am departure means being at the lot before 5. A delayed red-eye lands at 1:40am.

Ask whether the shuttle runs 24 hours. Ours does. Plenty do not, and the gap is usually the overnight window, which is exactly when you are least able to improvise.

4. How long is the ride?

Two parts: the distance and the number of stops. A lot three miles out that circles four other lots first is slower than a lot five miles out that drives straight in.

Ask for the terminal-to-lot time rather than the mileage. Ours is 10 to 15 minutes to any terminal.

5. Does anybody help with the bags?

The difference between a shuttle and a service. Loading two suitcases and a sample case onto a van yourself, then unloading them at the curb, is a small indignity at 5am and a real problem if you travel with equipment.

Our drivers load at the lot and unload at your terminal. Our luggage assistance guide covers what that looks like at both ends of a trip.

6. Is covered parking available, and at what price?

In Los Angeles this is a sun question. Eleven days of July sun does things to a dashboard and an interior. Ask whether covered inventory exists, whether it costs extra, and whether you can request it at booking rather than hoping on arrival.

7. Can the company be invoiced monthly?

Irrelevant for a personal trip, decisive for a business one. Individual charges mean every traveler files a receipt and an approver reviews it. Monthly invoicing means one document covering everyone.

Ours includes invoicing at no cost, which is the kind of feature that never appears in a price comparison and changes more about your month than two dollars a day does.

8. What happens when plans change?

Flights move. Trips get cut short or extended by three days. Ask what happens if you come back early, come back late, or do not come at all. Vague answers here are how a cheap rate becomes an argument at a kiosk.

How to score it

Do not average. Weight it, because the questions are not equal.

1. Rate and frequency are the two heavyweights. A lot that wins both is the answer. A lot that wins neither is out.
2. Hours are a gate, not a score. If the shuttle does not run when your flights are, nothing else matters.
3. Luggage, cover, and ride time are tiebreakers, and they are what you will actually notice on the trip.
4. Invoicing and change terms are company questions. Score them only if you are choosing for more than yourself.

If two lots are close after that, pick the one whose answers you got quickly. Operators who answer the shuttle-frequency question in one sentence tend to be operators who run the shuttle well.

The red flags

Patterns worth treating as warnings:

• No published shuttle frequency. The single most informative omission on any parking website.
• No stated overnight hours. Means the answer is probably no, or depends on the shift.
• A rate that only appears after you enter dates. Sometimes normal, sometimes a sign the price moves with demand.
• No phone number answered by a person. When a flight changes at 11pm, an email form is not a plan.
• Cancellation terms you cannot find. They exist. The question is why they are hard to locate.
• Reviews that all mention the same specific failure. One bad review is noise. Six describing the same 40-minute wait is data.

What shuttle frequency is worth, in minutes

Frequency sounds like a comfort feature until you convert it to time. Your expected wait is about half the headway, so a 10-minute schedule costs you roughly five minutes and a 30-minute schedule costs you fifteen.

Now count the trips. You wait twice per trip, going out and coming back. A traveler making 20 trips a year waits 40 times:

• At a 10-minute headway, about 200 minutes a year, a bit over three hours
• At a 30-minute headway, about 600 minutes, ten hours

That is a full working day of standing in a parking lot, traded for a rate difference that is usually a couple of dollars a day. On a 4-day trip, two dollars a day is eight dollars. Few people would sell an hour of their morning for eight dollars, but that is the trade a rate-only comparison quietly makes.

And the averages understate it, because the wait you remember is not the average one. It is the 28-minute wait before a 6am flight, which is the one that makes you leave 45 minutes earlier for every trip after it.

Two more questions if you are choosing for a company

The eight above are the traveler's questions. A travel manager has two more, and they decide how much work the choice creates every month.

Can they invoice the company monthly? Individual charges mean each traveler files a line with a date, an amount, a purpose and a receipt, because IRS Publication 463 expects a log, diary, notebook, or any other written record^[1] behind travel expenses, and your accountable plan depends on that documentation existing. An invoice satisfies it once, at the company level, for everybody.

Is there a corporate rate without a contract or a minimum? This is where parking vendors differ most. Some want volume commitments and an agreement for a discount. Ours applies with a free code, no contract and no minimum, which means a travel manager can pilot it on one trip and walk away if it disappoints.

Run it on us and a competitor

We would rather you did this than take our word for it. Our head-to-head with The Parking Spot runs the same questions honestly, including where the answers are similar, because on several of these eight any established operator will score well.

The places that separate operators are usually frequency, overnight coverage, and whether somebody touches your bags. Those three are where a parking lot stops being a parking lot and starts being a service.

A note on where price should sit

Price should be a filter, not a decision. Set a ceiling you are willing to pay, remove anything above it, then choose on the other seven questions.

That ordering matters because the cost difference between a good lot and a cheap one is usually a few dollars a day, while the experience difference is a half hour of your morning and whether your car was waiting when you landed at 1am. Our guide for business travelers covers what that half hour is worth over a year of trips.