Sale of tickets for parking space rentals at vending machines
The town of Bad Westernkotten (Germany) in the heart of Westphalia offers a new service for motor home travelers.  The mobile home park "An den Sole-Thermen" attracts guests with 46 parking spaces ideally located between the Hellweg-Sole thermal springs, spa gardens, spa promenade, and an idyllic forest area. Bad Westernkotten has taken a new direction for parking space rentals. In cooperation with Scheidt & Bachmann GmbH, an automatic vending machine based concept for ticket sales and access control was developed.

Hereby the rental charge is paid at the vending machine located at the entrance, before entering the lot. First, the guest selects the desired length of stay. Not only one-day tickets, but also multi-day tickets for 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 days as well as 1, 2, or 3-week tickets can be purchased. Payment is by debit card or in cash using coins or bank notes. Within the paid length of stay, the lot can be exited and reentered via the gate as often as desired by using the barcode card. Since purely recreational stays are also subject to health resort tax, the guest additionally selects the number of persons at the vending machine and receives a resort card with the valid length of stay for each person.
The guest is free to select the desired parking space. The total capacity of the lot is stored in the system, and the tickets sold together with their validity periods are automatically evaluated. Therefore, the system is able to independently recognize when the lot is at full capacity, and in this case it will return an appropriate message and not release any more tickets.
Since the resort tax must be remitted to the town, the monthly accounts of the vending machine shows ticket sales and resort tax separately.
At this time, we would like to thank the operators of the mobile home park "An den Sole-Thermen" and the representatives of the town Bad Westernkotten for the pleasant and constructive collaboration during this interesting project.

(October 2005)