Airport Parking
The majority of people travelling from UK airports prefer to use their car rather than take public transport because despite the government’s best efforts for us to use public transport travelling by car is far more convenient and allows a greater level of control.
This means you will need to park your car and for most, this will mean simply turning up at the airport and parking your car.
Wrong, this is exactly what the airport wants you to do because they operate two completely different pricing systems called the gate price or turn rate and the pre-booked price.
The reason why the pre-booked price came into being is because the off airport car parks to encourage business were able to substantially undercut the gate price.
I have just taken the price for using one of the multi storey car parks at Manchester airport that are adjacent to each terminal and the price per day is a staggering £27. Imagine coming back off your 15 day stay in Greece to be faced by a bill of £405. But to be fair most people know not to use a multi-storey unless you are just dropping off or collecting. However, if you pre-book the price drops to £89.99, now that’s what I call a saving.
So we now move to the cost of using the long stay which charges £64 for 7 days and £6.50 for every 24 hours thereafter. For a 15 day stay the cost amounts to £122.50 yet if you pre-book the same parking the cost reduces to £59.99 or £69.99 depending upon the terminal, which is still a huge saving.
At this time of the year the off airport car parks are operating at full capacity and their price is virtually the same as the on airport price, however, if you look a couple of months in advance the price between the long stay on airport price and off airport car parks is a saving of about £20.
Some off airport car parks are less than 10 minutes away from the terminal and some considerably further and it is a balance between convenience and price. One type of parking that combines the two is a return greet whereby you park at an off airport car park but pay extra to have your car waiting close to the terminal upon your return.
