Last weekend, I had the pleasure of taking a nice trip to California. We made San Jose our base camp and took day trips to Monterey, Carmel, Big Sur, San Francisco, and Sausalito.
I booked a triple AAA rate at the Fairmont San Jose mostly because it was highly rated on Tripadvisor and I got a fairly decent price of $123 a night. It was my first time staying at a Fairmont, and it certainly lived up to its rating.
One of the downsides of the great hotel was that it only had valet parking for $26 a night (plus tax + tip). It’s really a bummer when you get a nice rate on the hotel, but they make up for it in their hotel parking fees. Normally, I am a self parking kind of guy, but that didn’t seem to be an option at this downtown San Jose hotel. Considering I was there for 4 nights, I certainly could think of better things to do with $104 than spend it on parking.
After searching on google, I ended up on yelp and found that I could self park at the Fairmont Plaza garage which was attached to the Fairmont. However, it wasn’t much better and would be $20 if you entered in the evening and left in the morning.
Upon further searching, I came across Bestparking.com. The idea is brilliant – find the cheapest and most convenient parking in the city.
You pick the city, and then search a particular address, neighborhood, or attraction. Enter the arrival and departure time and it shows you the total cost of available parking in different parking garages.
They have an iphone app which I downloaded. The app seems to be pretty good. An example of a search near the Fairmont San Jose shows that the cheapest parking around is $12 for the time that I wanted.
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When you click on the price, it shows the location of the garage with the details of the calculated cost.
So, instead of paying $26 a night at the Fairmont, you can get $12 a night just 4 blocks away.
You do need to keep in mind that the valet parking at the Fairmont allows for in and out privileges. Other public garages usually do not. That wasn’t an issue for me because I would park at night, leave in the morning, go on a day trip and then park again at night. If you need in and out privileges, then you may just have to suck it up and pay the $26.
It looks like bestparking.com includes many cities in the US and a few in Canada.
Overall, I was impressed with the concept of the app and that it saved me around $50 on parking! I will certainly be using it again!
Ended up parking at the same garage as you after reading your post. Saved a few bucks… thanks!