Valet Parking - a service worth paying for?

One of the Skyscanner team mentioned that he’d used a valet parking service at Heathrow airport the other day. This sounded remarkably flashy, expensive and very unlike him so I quizzed him about it. Many people (including me until recently) have not heard of valet parking at airports - which is a shame because it is a great idea which saves endless amounts of time and stress and is not actually too pricey.

In my experience, the usual scenario for a family parking at an airport goes along the following lines: there’s lots of shouting and getting lost en route before you arrive in enormous long-stay car-park and drive three hundred miles to zone ZZZ999. You unpack twenty tons of luggage and trawl across a vast expanse of concrete to discover that the shuttle bus stop is the other direction. It begins to rain. Children complain about blisters and the shuttle bus fails to arrive. 25 minutes later with minimum check-in time getting dangerously close, the bus arrives where you squeeze on like doomed cattle and people tread on your feet. The bus unloads with lots of others who are all on your flight and you stand at the end of the check-in line, steaming gently from the rain and feeling exhausted before you’ve even got near a plane.

Or of course you could drive to right outside terminal 3 at Heathrow where you are met by a nice chauffeur who helps you unpack, takes your car away and parks it for you in a secure compound. Upon your return to Heathrow, your car is waiting for you outside your terminal building and off you go back home.

There are a number of companies that offer this service at airports all over Britain. As our largest airport, I picked Heathrow as an example and investigated the costs quoted by various companies. The table below shows just a few of the results:

Prices to park at Heathrow T3

Parking provider	Parking Option	Transfer time	Cost (£)
BAA Official Parking	Long Stay Business Parking Valet parking Short stay special	8-15 mins bus 4-8 mins bus 0 mins 2-5 min walk	99.00 115.00 147.90 273.00
Purple Parking*	Long Stay Valet parking Park&Ride premium**	10-15 mins bus 0 mins 10-15 mins bus	64.63 100.46 80.36
NCP	NCP car park Short stay T3	5-10 mins walk 5 mins walk	84.00 273.00
Happy Days Parking	Off airport parking	10 mins bus	69.95
UB8 Parking	Off airport parking	10 mins bus	74.99
Star Parking	Valet parking	0 mins	111.63
Chauffered Parking Services	Valet parking	0 mins	147.90

* Prices here are shown for members only. Membership is free.
** This option means you drive to the long stay and the car is returned to you at the terminal when you come back.
Prices correct as at 10-24 November 2007

Clearly there are quite a range of prices out there but we’ve highlighted what we believe to be one of the better deals out there. Regardless of which parking company you pick, it’s probably best not to leave your car in a short stay car park whilst you’re away. Two weeks at Heathrow, will cost you nearly nine hundred pounds - you could buy another holiday for that.

© 2008 Skyscanner. All rights reserved. Any views and opinions expressed in Nick's Travel Bytes articles are those of the author and not Skyscanner.