Louisa of Preston Parking on Why the Future of Parking Is About More Than Parking
What happens when someone with 20 years of experience in IT consulting enters the parking industry and starts rethinking how it works?
For Louisa of Preston Parking, it opens up a conversation about smarter operations, AI, autonomous vehicles, and a future where parking becomes almost invisible. In a recent conversation with Chirag Jain of Get My Parking, Louisa shared how her journey into parking shaped her perspective on the industry’s biggest opportunities, and why the best parking experience might be the one people barely notice.
The Best Parking Experience Is the One You Don’t Remember
Louisa offered a simple but powerful way to look at parking: people aren’t buying a parking space. They’re trying to get somewhere.
Whether it’s a baseball game, a concert, or a shopping trip, parking is only one part of the experience. When it goes smoothly, people can focus on what they came for. When it doesn’t, long queues, uncertainty, and delays can overshadow everything else.
As Louisa put it, “The best parking experiences are invisible.” That idea has implications for the entire industry. Improving parking isn’t just about managing vehicles or spaces. It’s about removing friction from the journey, giving people back their time, and making the experience feel effortless.
AI Can Give Parking Operators Room to Grow
Louisa’s perspective on technology comes from seeing operational challenges firsthand. She described how parking owners can spend significant time reconciling payments, checking vehicle activity, and manually investigating discrepancies. These tasks take attention away from running and growing a business.
She sees AI creating opportunities to simplify that work and help operators make better-informed decisions. One example she discussed was using AI agents to understand activity around a parking location, from nearby events to changes that could influence demand.
That kind of insight can help operators spot opportunities without spending hours researching them manually. For Louisa, the real value of AI is simplicity. The technology should handle the complexity behind the scenes, allowing operators to focus on decisions and growth rather than the work required to get there.
Autonomous Vehicles Could Change What Parking Looks Like
Louisa’s vision extends beyond today’s parking operations. She sees autonomous vehicles creating new possibilities for how cities use space and how vehicles are stored.
As urban areas evolve, some surface parking could give way to other uses, increasing the need to think differently about capacity. More efficient vehicle storage, including vertical parking and automated facilities, could become part of that future. Imagine being dropped off at your destination while your vehicle moves to a parking facility on its own, ready for when you need it again.
Making that vision possible will require parking infrastructure, technology, and operators to work together. It also calls for a shift in perspective: designing around the experience people want, rather than asking people to work around the parking process.
Building What’s Next, Together
Louisa’s conversation with Chirag highlights an opportunity for the parking industry to rethink familiar challenges and explore what’s possible when operational expertise meets technology.
At Get My Parking, we’re excited to work with partners like Preston Parking who share that curiosity and willingness to challenge established ways of doing things. The future of parking may look very different from today. The opportunity is to make that future simpler for operators and more seamless for everyone who parks.