Waasland Shopping selects Orange Belgium to provide a new smart parking experience to its customers

As from today the customers of Waasland Shopping will enjoy a brand new experience, thanks to Orange Belgium’s smart parking solution. Based on sensors, smart cameras and a mobile application, the smart parking solutions allows, for instance, customers to be directly guided to available parking spots through their mobile device.

A comprehensive and effective parking policy is key for the attractiveness of a shopping center, as it greatly impacts the customer experience. Waasland Shopping’s landlord, has decided to offer its customers a brand new experience by selecting Orange Belgium for the deployment of its smart parking solution. A major move, for a retail institution that counts no less than 2.750 parking spots for its customers, and is currently also investing in a major renovation of its rooftop parking. Orange Belgium and Communithing’s solution will help customers finding an available parking spot very quickly: a mobile app provides the drivers with a real-time overview of available parking spaces, guides them to the most fitting parking spot.

Based on sensors, smart cameras and a mobile application, this smart parking solution offers the Waasland Shopping management precious insight which can be used to optimize the lay-out and organization of their parking, while reducing congestion in busy days, and thus reducing overall CO2 emissions.

The smart parking services have been developed thanks to an exclusive partnership with the Belgian scale-up Communithings, which Orange Belgium helped to grow in Belgium and internationally through its Orange Fab acceleration program and a minority stake investment.

Werner De Laet, Chief Enterprise Business, Wholesale and Innovation Officer of Orange Belgium, comments: “As an innovative and responsible operator, we do believe a relevant usage of technology can help overcome major societal issues. Addressing the mobility and parking problematic is key for any retailer as it increases customer satisfaction, helps reduce congestion, CO2 emissions and can strongly benefit to the retailer’s attractiveness. We’re thrilled to see that our first successful projects with public authorities have now translated into commercial success with privately-owned customers, which offers an additional layer of well-thought parking policies for the benefit of all, regular customers as well as major actors from the retail industry.”

“The installation of this solution, via an investment by the landlord, will help us to assist our customers in finding quicker than ever an available parking spot. Next to that, we, as managers of this site, gain valuable insights on our customers parking behavior. Therefore the solution serves multiple benefits. The partnership enables a quick installation since all data is transmitted wireless, so having Orange on board in the project adds value” states Vincent Hermans, Shopping manager.

For more information: www.business.orange.be/smart-parking