Hotels have long viewed parking as a guest amenity rather than a profit center. As such, it’s been traditionally managed separately from other core revenue functions—configured once, and infrequently revisited.
For hotels, this approach is becoming harder to justify. With occupancy and RevPAR under pressure in many markets, hotels are reassessing assets that they have previously overlooked—and parking is emerging as one of them.
Not because it is new, but because its economics have become more compelling. Revenue-driving initiatives that historically required large CapEx and OpEx investments, including parking, are now far more cost-effective due to technology. And technologies like Ocra—the first AI-powered RMS & GDS purpose-built for parking assets—are accelerating parking’s transformation from a static, operational necessity into a dynamic, essential lever for NOI growth.
The business case for hotel parking: 70–80% margins under optimized conditions
Hotel parking consistently yields some of the highest profit margins of any department. With optimized pricing and distribution, margins can exceed 70–80%—far outperforming F&B (10–30%), spa services (30–50%) and other ancillary revenue streams.
Parking also requires very little incremental CapEx or OpEx to scale once basic infrastructure is implemented. And, distinctly, parking continues to show growth, even when room revenues soften.
From 2019 to 2023, parking revenue at U. S. hotels grew by roughly 23%—more than four times the growth rate of total hotel revenue during the same period—while parking profits climbed ~32%. Parking stands out from other ancillary revenue streams due to its simplicity, speed-to-revenue and substantial margins.
The hotel parking status quo: static, siloed and overlooked
Despite empirical data that demonstrates its resilience and untapped potential as a durable growth lever, in the hotel sector, parking is often treated as a static line item.
- Rates are configured and rarely revisited
- Operations are manual and labor-intensive
- Decisions are made outside of the overall revenue strategy
A hotel may enlist a third-party parking operator to manage on-the-ground operations and maintain the physical lot.
In this case, the parking operator’s priority—symmetrical with the hotel’s—is to provide an exceptional guest parking experience and ensure the lot is functioning optimally. The result is that pricing and availability are disconnected from non-guest demand, which prevents this high-margin asset from reaching its full potential.
Even when parking operators and hotel teams recognize the opportunity to list unused inventory on online channels for non-guest customers, that incremental revenue is under-optimized. There are a plethora of reasons for this—many of which the Ocra team, as former parking operators, experienced firsthand. Namely, parking operators have many competing priorities, and sophisticated yield management for excess inventory for non-guest parking seldom rises to the top of their to-do list.
The opportunity: Ocra AI-powered hotel parking revenue management
Ocra introduces a new model for hotel parking revenue management—one that combines AI-powered RMS & GDS software with hands-on, data-driven insight from a team of expert parking revenue managers.
In the hotel parking ecosystem, Ocra bridges hotel teams, parking operators and “parking OTAs” to add a layer of sophisticated yield optimization without creating more work for the hotel or parking operator. Parking OTAs are consumer demand channels that function identically to an OTA like Booking. com or Expedia, but for parking spaces, not rooms. They’re low-cost solutions that implement high margin collection.
The Ocra software globally distributes a flexible amount of the hotel’s underutilized parking inventory on the parking OTAs at optimal rates. This makes these spaces available to non-guest customers looking for parking near demand drivers like airports, events and urban corridors.
Parking revenue managers architect an ideal channel mix and generate upside using the Ocra software and AI tools, market data and in-house expertise. They act as humans-in-the-loop who train AI/machine learning models on rate and inventory decisions that a non-human algorithm wouldn’t naturally pick up. In 2025, Ocra generated $28 million in incremental revenue for 118 assets in its revenue managed cohort of locations.
Eyes in the sky + boots on the ground = optimized hotel parking yield
Ocra is intentionally agnostic, supporting hotels with or without third-party parking operators, across surface lots and garages, regardless of the presence of gates and other parking equipment.
Critically, this approach does not require significant upfront investment. Ocra is a complement to whatever infrastructure is in place. After a short time monetizing existing inventory, the hotel can use early earnings to fund substantial enhancements (e. g., gates, enforcement, shuttles or staff) that allow them to park more customers and increase NOI over time.
Parking operators that partner with Ocra deliver stronger revenue results without adding operational complexity. Incentives are aligned across all stakeholders: the parking operator delivers a premium experience while Ocra adds new value through online parking revenue management. To date, Ocra has worked with five large national parking operators, in addition to dozens of regional operators, to grow revenue 300%+ by maximizing online channel performance.
Ocra’s scale and partnership network are essential to this model. With its software live at 600+ locations in North America and platform integrations and partnerships established with leading parking OTAs including SpotHero, Airport Parking Reservations, Cheap Airport Parking and Rightway, Ocra helps hotels:
- Go live on all parking OTAs within 2 weeks
- Grab more margin per transaction
- Increase customer acquisition without marketing dollars
Pairing Ocra’s “eyes in the sky” data and intelligence with “boots on the ground” operational insights from hotel teams and parking operators generates meaningful incremental revenue for the asset that flows directly to the bottom line.
A mindset shift: parking as a profit center
Forward-thinking hotel ownership and management groups are embracing parking technologies and beginning to think of parking as a viable way to grow NOI with minimal overhead. Interest and investment in parking revenue management is growing. The hotel parking revenue control technology market reached $1.27B in 2024 and is forecast to grow at ~8. 1% CAGR through 2033.
“On average, only 6% of non-room ancillary revenue flows to a hotel’s bottom line,” says James Hansen, industry veteran and head of partnerships at Ocra. “Our partners are seeing over 70% margins that grow over time. The impact that parking can have on hotel NOI cannot be understated. We built the software, and the team, to unlock that potential and be a meaningful profit center for our partners.”
Ocra pivoted from parking operations to B2B software in 2020 and has since raised close to $10m in strategic funding from the parking and hospitality industries. MCR Hotels is a notable hospitality client and investor.
Learn more: https://getocra.com
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