ParkMundo on Building a Global Airport Parking Platform
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Airport parking is an important part of the travel journey, but it is still often treated as an afterthought. In this In the Spotlight interview, Parking Network sits down with Martijn Meeuws, CEO and Co-founder of ParkMundo, to discuss the origins of the company, its rebranding under the ParkMundo name, its growing B2B partnerships, recent funding, and what comes next for the organization.
Q: Could you provide a brief introduction to the company and yourself?
Martijn Meeuws:
I’m Martijn Meeuws, Co-founder and CEO of ParkMundo. We are an airport parking technology platform. We operate from Eindhoven, the Netherlands. What we do is basically connect air travelers with, almost, a portfolio of 900 parking service providers in 15 different countries across four continents.
It started in 2013, founded by Jeroen, and I joined shortly after. We basically started building the company, just the two of us, from a garage at Jeroen’s parents’ place.
So what we have seen in the market is that airport parking is an important part of a flight journey. But also we have seen that consumers are struggling to understand all the different parking options that are available. There seemed to be a need for a convenient way to compare pricing, but also to understand which parties are trustworthy.
We originally started solving this for Dutch consumers in the Netherlands, and we built upon that, market by market. While we were always self-funded, we needed to be very disciplined in how we expanded. So how to create demand, how to find supply and build valuable partnerships, but also how to make sure that the markets we expand to that model works there as well.
That also shows the journey to where we stand today. We are no longer like an airport parking comparison website. We are a truly international technology platform connecting demand and supply globally.
Q: Recently, there have been major updates to the organization, especially bringing your different platforms together under ParkMundo. Can you expand on that?
Martijn Meeuws:
Yes, correct. As we grew over time, market by market, at some point we had a portfolio of nine different local brands that we had to maintain.
We also no longer only offer our services to consumers, but we also developed a business-to-business capability. Together with proprietary technology platform, we needed one name that reflects where we are today, but also where we are heading towards in the future.
That’s why we came together under the name ParkMundo, which basically says: this is where you start your trip when you enter the world. We are truly global, active across four continents.
The platform itself, we basically completely rebuilt that and went live last year. It is basically the robust foundation upon which we can scale further and also in an efficient way.
Airport parking may sound simple, but the underlying market is pretty complex. You have a lot of different parking types, availability periods, pricing strategies, and operating systems they use. With this new platform, new capability, we can basically translate it into a consistent booking flow for the market.
That is why we believe we need to make this process simple and become a distributor globally.
Q: Would you say that parking is a whole when it comes to the consumer experience with the airports, with flights, travel, is it represented well? Do you think enough attention is given to it?
Martijn Meeuws:
If you ask me, not really. You can imagine that most trips, the first physical start and end point is basically at the parking. If people start to fly and it is mostly looked as an after thought basically.
When you book your trip, your holiday, or your flight, then most of the time the consumer or traveler are left with booking of the parking separately. Besides that, it creates friction. It is also a missed opportunity for travel brands because it is a way for them to complete the whole travel journey.
If you look at where people book now, you already have the most relevant data available: the airport people depart from, the departure date, and the return date. So it would be a really natural ancillary to add to that funnel, which does not happen on a large scale currently.
We believe that we can do multiple things. If travel brands can add it to their funnel, it can become more convenient for the user and for the travel brand. It can be a way to have more complementary service package, but also create incremental and auxiliary revenue while at it.
That is why we believe that if we make this simple and offer this opportunity, that it can be a win-win for the parking, the supply side of things, it is also an opportunity to reach more or a larger audience that they could not otherwise without being as involved here.
Q: How would you say ParkMundo, especially looking also into the future, how do you differentiate yourself?
Martijn Meeuws:
I would say that differentiating ourselves would be a mix of assets that we basically built.
Besides that network, that portfolio, we have B2C demand, consumer demand. We have more than a decade of experience with converting consumers and all these different markets.
But also we are completely independent. We do not own any parking facilities. Then we do not push or we do not want to favor any parking provider, facility, or service.
We just aim to offer or to help support finding the best solution for that travel provider. And, on the other hand, to get the right audience for the parking provider.
We believe that this on a large scale really makes a difference in how we approach it. And the value of becoming this independent party in the market.
Q: Can you tell me a bit on what is the plan for the future currently?
Martijn Meeuws:
That funding will basically be used to accelerate growth on an already proven foundation as being fully bootstrapped.
For the last decade, we already were really concise on the investments we made and optimized unit economics. There are basically three pillars, or three growth areas. First of them being technology enhancement that we were already were building upon. Now we have geographic expansion and also customer experience that we want to improve.
While our business-to-consumer marketplace our core business, we see this B2B capability and embedded solution as a second growth engine.
For travel providers, our message would be airport parking. Adding to your journey can be seamless and effortless, and it can complement the trip.
Our next growth phase would basically be to connect as many travelers to this foundation we build, no matter where they book their trip.
About Parking Network
Parking Network is the leading information source for parking. We connect professionals through our online and offline channels. On our online platform parking.net, we publish the latest news, product showcases, job openings, and tenders related to parking. On our platform, you can access the most complete industry and parking professionals directory. Offline, we host niche-specific networking events such as the Airport Parking Network Event.
