The V&A Waterfront has launched the largest digital access parking management installation in Africa to date, in partnership with admyt, a market leading digital platform that provides cashless, ticketless, and touchless parking systems to over 100 000 users across a host of prominent retail, office, and mixed-use sites in South Africa.
As one of the continent’s largest premier retail and lifestyle destinations, the V&A Waterfront’s complex parking operation of over 8 000 bays, spread across 95 lanes in various outdoor and undercover parking lots, caters to a host of retail, hospitality, and workplace amenities that welcome nearly 2 million visitors per month.
“We prioritise a seamless parking process with minimal delays and low levels of congestion,” comments Andre Theys, Executive Director for Operations at the V&A Waterfront. “The partnership with admyt has allowed us to enhance convenience and efficiency while ensuring a hassle-free parking experience for our valued visitors. It’s a highly innovative solution that aligns with our commitment to providing exceptional service and optimising the guest journey, but also contributes to the V&A’s sustainability efforts by reducing paper usage and helping to lower our carbon footprint.”
Utilizing license plate reader (LPR) and QR code access systems to seamlessly open entrance and exit booms, admyt’s platform reconciles parking transactions via its mobile app which eliminates the need for paper tickets, cash, and queuing at pay stations by charging parking fees to registered users’ bank cards or admyt wallets. Users also enjoy access to discounted parking rates, free parking credits, and digital ticket validations with retailers such as Pick n Pay.
The company was founded in 2016 with the objective of leveraging technology and innovation to address the challenges that traditional parking systems present; they are expensive from an operating and cost perspective, and they typically provide a poor consumer and tenant experience as a result of major inefficiencies.
“Digital parking solutions assist landlords with these challenges, while giving them more control and better tracking of their tenant and visitor parking,” comments Devon Beynon, Managing Director of admyt.
“In the current macroeconomic environment, it is difficult for landlords to achieve desirable returns from their retail, office, and mixed-use assets and there is a strong push to drive footfall and to ensure tenant retention while focusing on improving efficiencies and optimizing their assets. If we compare the pricing of installing a digital parking management system, like admyt, versus a traditional parking system for a new build – or to replace existing parking infrastructure, the capital cost is close to a tenth.”
“We also work closely with landlords to drive user adoption as the more transactions that are done via our digital platform, the more the marginal cost per user for parking goes down for the landlord.”
With a proven track record of over 25 million gate entries and exits and a world-class 97%+ accuracy rate across its portfolio, admyt spends an extensive amount of time creating bespoke user-centric systems that understand the entire scope of each site.
“We have experience with large scale installations at our other sites including the Mall of Africa, Sandton City, and Centurion Mall,” says Beynon.
“The key difference with the V&A Waterfront – and its complexity – is the amount of parking areas over its vast geographical spread. We needed to consider the different types of amenities and style of tenants as well as the complicated rate cards and zones for the different parking tariffs. Overall, this is our largest project of this nature, and we are extremely proud of the dedication and commitment of our team for its successful completion.”
“With this installation, admyt provides a best-in-class case study that will further drive adoption of our platform across the sector on a landlord level. On the other hand, this shows the broader investment community that there is an active PropTech market in South Africa and that commercial property owners are serious about investing in technology to enhance their assets,” he concludes.
