Valet Parking your car at an airport

When considering Gatwick airport parking it's often easy to overlook many of the options available to you and simply pay on the gate when you arrive. However, shopping around a bit you can find a ream of other services, such as valet parking or meet and greet services, but it's worth checking out the market before you buy into such things.

While meet and greet services are very convenient, you can't actually see where your car is parked since it is parked by somebody else. Many companies have been known to park cars in fields during busy times and even leave keys in the cars for convenience! Don't lose hope though; many companies still do manage to provide an exemplary service, with high security facilities, watched around the clock to keep your car safe. Be sure the company you choose has guarantees of safety for your car, which can include the drivers and their insurance.

In such facilities it is often possible to get valet services for your car at the same time. Most places who offer valetservice vary the level of their service to include a variety of options, the standard options being a car wash, polishing vacuumed interior etc. But depending on who you go with you can have hand polished finishes, the carpets and upholstery shampooed, or in the case of leather, treated with leather food. The prices for some of these additional services do tend to go up fairly fast, where an external wash may only be £10 to £20, top end services could easily break £100.

Depending on how you feel coming back from a holiday however, this still could be very worth it. Many travellers coming back from business trips from somewhere like the USA will be heavily jet lagged and returning to get into a fresh clean car for the trip home is much nicer than a musty car that has just sat for a week or two in a field.

Many people in such situations also chose to stay overnight in a hotel, such as the Gatwick Hilton Hotel, so when they return so they can drive back in the morning after a night's sleep and some food, which is much less stressful and somewhat safer than driving tired. Combining these services into a park and stay deal can significantly reduce the stress normally associated with travel, such as not having to worry about traffic travelling in to the airport, missing flights, remembering where you parked at the airport or having to wash it after it sat still for a week or so.

Also, considering you can save a large amount of money booking for airport parking in advance, you may even find that having your car picked up and delivered to you at the airport might not even cost much more than parking in a normal long stay car park, which may have questionable security. It's definitely worth a look-in.


The author is knows a lot about Gatwick Hotels, specifically the Gatwick Hilton Hotel