Car park location signs

If the event is large and/or the car park vast, you should consider ways of helping the public remember where their vehicle was parked. Simple things like naming car parks, fields and gates will help, so ‘Red Car Park’ or ‘Elephant Car Park’ will stick in their minds, where they may not remember ‘Car Park 2A’ at the end of the day. At least by naming car parks and marking them on the site maps, you can direct them to the right field at the end of the day, when they ask the way to their car.

Even if you are not going to charge for parking, it may be beneficial to hand out raffle tickets to each car as it arrives. So you will know that pink tickets came from Pink Car Park on the field beside the motorway and blue tickets came from the Blue Car Park to the north of the farmhouse etc. You may also be able to make double use of the tickets by having a prize draw on them, as an extra attraction to members of the public and to make them use the car parks and not to use surrounding roads and verges.

You may not have witnessed the distress on a young couple’s faces when after five hours at the event they realise they don’t know where their car is. Have you seen the despair in the eyes of parents who have spent two hours trudging around the fields looking for their Fiesta, dragging screaming, hot, tired and temperamental toddlers with them? I have seen it. If the car park names and coloured raffle tickets don’t work and all else has failed, it may be worth having a vehicle available to take them around to look for their lost car. Consider extending the insurance of the roving car park supervisor’s vehicle to cover them for taking those lost and forgetful members of the public to search for their car.

The roving car park supervisor will be in charge of car parks, their staff, money collection, security and the use of the car parks. I suggest that this supervisor be issued with a radio and a minibus which is insured to carry staff, signs and equipment, plus members of the public looking for lost cars.