Holidaymakers this winter could save enough money to buy a M&S British Free Range Christmas Turkey Crown with stuffing (feeding a family of 12) simply by booking airport parking two weeks earlier.
We compared quotes of the cheapest pre-booked airport parking and the most expensive parking on the day across all of the UK’s international airports that we could find, and it revealed that Birmingham flyers could save up to £53!
The study, conducted by UK travel insurance provider Staysure, was carried out through analysis of Google search data and gaining quotes from airport parking sites throughout the UK.
So, how popular is your local airport parking?
When inspecting Google search data, we found that non-London airports have three times more passengers looking for parking in comparison to those flying from a London airport. With better public transport links into London, passengers travelling to a non-London airport are heavily reliant on airport parking.
Which non-London airport parking is the most sought after?
Manchester has far more people searching for car parking than any other airport. In fact – there are 3 more searches for Manchester airport parking as compared to every 1 for parking at Heathrow.
We estimate that 1 in 20 passengers flying through Manchester will be looking for airport parking (5.6% of people flying).
Taking a look at the South-West of England, 1 in 10 flyers from Bristol airport are looking for parking – the highest frequency as compared to other top ten UK airports, suggesting high competition for spaces for passengers flying from the airport.
The good news for those travelling from an airport outside London – we discovered that London airports were on average £15 more expensive than non-London airports to park at per week.
How does this compare to London’s airports?
3 out of every 5 people in 2017 flew from a London airport, yet we found that not even 1 in 100 people flying from Heathrow are looking for airport parking. Heathrow has the lowest percentage of flyers looking for parking in comparison to its passenger volume at just 0.83%.
Furthermore, if you leave parking till the last minute and are booking on the day, then you should expect to pay an extra £30 on average as compared to on-the-day prices for non-London airports. On average, we uncovered that it’s £3.70 more expensive per day to choose your airport car park last minute than pre-booking for a week.
In terms of popularity, Heathrow airport parking comes in as the sixth most popular location – a far cry from what you might expect from the 3rd busiest airport in the world. Heathrow comes in after airports such as Birmingham and Stansted in our study.
