I know what they’re thinking: If you can afford to pay for roundtrip airline tickets, hotel accommodations, food and, of course, shopping, you should have money for parking.
I also know what else they’re thinking. In fact they already said so in their statement: This is a business. We’re here to make money. And we have very concrete financial commitments to the government. (And unsaid: We’re definitely not here to grant favors to the public.)
Fair enough.
In raising the overnight parking fees at NAIA by a staggering 400 percent (from P300/day to P1,200/day), the powers that be at New NAIA Infra Corp. must have been inspired by the success of Skyway Stage 3 (another project under mother company San Miguel Corporation). Despite the steep fees (more than P500 for a round trip from QC to Makati), the line for the Araneta Avenue exit in QC stretches more than two kilometers, underscoring the high demand for the Skyway system.
Obviously, people are willing to pay a high price to get away from the maddening EDSA traffic. But that price premium is because the provider provided an improvement over the status quo.
But NAIA overnight parking at P1,200? They haven’t even improved anything with the parking yet. Sure, they have financial commitments. But don’t all businesses? If not to the government, they have commitments to banks, creditors, and/or shareholders. If a restaurant buys out another chain, do they quadruple the menu prices to be sure that they will recoup their investment in time (and without even changing or improving anything)?
Yes, the NAIA management wants to weed out the non-airport parkers to free up space for legitimate air travelers. And yes, that seems to have worked splendidly (although I never had problems finding a parking space before—and I flew out 15 times in the last 24 months). Not having a driver, I always park my car at NAIA for trips up to four nights long. Longer than that and it’s cheaper to take Grab from my house in QC to NAIA and back (approximately P1,200 both ways). But that was when overnight parking was at P300.
But at P1,200/day, ANYTHING is cheaper than parking overnight at NAIA. Mind you I don’t have issues with the raised hourly rates (from P40 for the first 3 hours and P15 for every hour to P50 for the first 2 hours and P25 every succeeding hour). That’s a reasonable double-digit percentage increase. But triple digits? Not just triple digits but a whopping 400%?!?
They did manage to get rid of non-airport-user parkers, but they also managed to get rid of legitimate parkers. It’s like burning a house to get rid of cockroaches.
I’m sure those who take weeks-long trips to Europe in Business Class can afford the exorbitant parking fees even if they left their Porsche Cayennes in NAIA parking for a month. Then again, they also probably have a fleet of drivers and Lexus minivans to drop them off and all their Rimowa luggages and pick them up again when they arrive.
But what about the vast majority? Those who save up their hard-earned cash so they can buy tickets on a seat sale. Dear NAIA management, not everyone has a chauffeur. And have you tried booking Grab on a rush hour? Maybe your executives should try it. How about the airline staff like pilots, pursers, and flight attendants? Will the airlines split the tab too with their employees (just like how they’ll split with the flying public the raised airport fees)? So much for the greater good for the greater number.
If you really want to make a meaningful (and appreciated) difference, rethink your overnight parking rates. Or even allow special overnight rates for REAL air travellers. It can be as easy as having a counter where returning passengers can show their boarding passes and they’ll be given a magnetic card (to prevent counterfeits; yes I know how some of our countrymen work) to present to the exit cashier. Or they can even pay at that counter so they don’t have to queue at the exit cashier (like in some malls).
Do this and you might even achieve a faster ROI from more airport parkers—the real outbound ones—than having all those empty parking slots you have now.
