The emergence of the online parking marketplace.

Parking is an inherently transient activity in which most drivers don’t think about parking until they’re in their vehicles headed to their destinations. However, a few types of parking do seem to have tipped with regard to pre-planning and pre-booking.

One type is “event parking,” or securing a space that is tied to a particular pre-planned activity with known start and end time, like a sporting event or theater performance. This type of parking activity now happens whether the parking space is at the actual venue itself, or simply nearby. Another is “airport parking,” an instance when a driver also fully knows the parameters of his or her parking duration.

These types of pre-booked parking events make sense for the driver, who gets cost certainty and the benefit of guaranteeing a parking space amid a potentially stressful trip. But they also make sense for event parking operators, many of whom open solely to supply parking for those events. They can premium-price their guaranteed spots and improve their asset utilization without interfering with any regular drive-up customers.

Historically, daily and monthly off-street parking, which makes up nearly half of all parking revenue in the U.S., has been left out of the pre-booking game. However, this type of parking transaction is becoming a much larger part of the online marketplace, with the growth of smartphone usage.

Another factor that should aid expansion of this type of pre-booking is garages being able to accept mobile parking passes, the kinds that live on your smartphone until you arrive at the garage and open the access control gate.