Booking-level pricing analysis, own and third-party car parks, Jan 2024 – 7 Sep 2026
8 September 2026 · Part 3 of ongoing analysis, refreshing the 29 July interim findings with six additional weeks of data (to 7 September) and carrying forward the demand/supply and conflict-timeline analysis prepared for the August pricing meeting.
About the APH airport parking data
- Booking-level data covering stays from 1 January 2024 to 7 September 2026 – approximately 1.30 million bookings across 19 UK airports and both own and third-party car parks (up from 1.2 million bookings to 15 July in the original interim report).
- Two rate measures are used throughout: the non-discounted (list) rate, and the sold (achieved) rate the customer actually paid. Both are calculated as revenue ÷ duration.
- Third-party car park figures reflect only the volume booked through this channel and are not a full picture of those operators’ total market position.
- A small number of bookings (0.24% of the total) with a zero or negative sold rate have been excluded from all figures below, consistent with the original methodology.
- All figures below are grouped by parking stay date, not booking date, consistent with both prior reports.
UK airport parking prices are still down, but the decline is easing
The year-on-year gap has narrowed since June
The 29 July report’s central finding was a widening year-on-year decline through Q2 and into July, described at the time as “the clearest signal in the dataset so far.” With six more weeks of data, that read needs revising: the decline peaked in June/July and has eased for two further consecutive periods since.
Figure 2 – Year-on-year change in sold ADR, 2026 vs 2025, by month.
| Month | 2025 | 2026 | 2026 vs 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | £5.98 | £5.99 | +0.1% |
| February | £7.06 | £7.13 | +1.0% |
| March | £6.87 | £7.42 | +8.0% |
| April | £8.01 | £7.87 | -1.8% |
| May | £8.88 | £8.65 | -2.6% |
| June | £8.82 | £8.33 | -5.6% |
| July (full month) | £8.57 | £8.11 | -5.4% |
| August (full month) | £9.15 | £8.89 | -2.9% |
| September (1-7) | £9.23 | £9.04 | -2.1% |
Table 1 – UK sold ADR by calendar month, 2025 vs 2026.
The trough was June/July, at -5.6% and -5.4% respectively. August came in at -2.9%, and the first week of September at -2.1% – the third and fourth consecutive periods of improvement. This is still a real year-on-year decline, but it is a narrowing one, not the “widening through the summer” pattern reported in July. On a quarterly view: Q1 +3.6%, Q2 -3.3%, Q3 (1 Jul – 7 Sep, i.e. just over two-thirds of the quarter) -3.8%. Q3 is materially more complete than the single fortnight available for the 29 July report and should be a much more reliable read than that report’s -11.4% partial-quarter figure was – which, as flagged at the time, moved once the rest of July came in.
How airport parking prices change throughout the year
The underlying seasonal pattern remains unchanged
Figure 1 – Monthly average daily rate, sold vs non-discounted, Jan 2024 – Sep 2026 (Sept partial shaded).
The seasonal pattern already described in the July report continues unchanged: a trough around January/November and a peak around August/September, with the gap between list and sold rate (discount depth) continuing to widen gradually rather than as a one-off. Nothing in the additional six weeks of data changes this underlying shape – the story below is about the size of the year-on-year gap within that pattern, not the pattern itself.
Airport parking price trends vary significantly across the UK
How prices and bookings changed across individual airports
Extending the airport comparison to a full like-for-like 1 January – 7 September window changes the ranking in some important ways since the last two reports:
Figure 3 – Airport-level year-on-year sold ADR change, 1 Jan – 7 Sep 2026 vs 2025 (APH’s three own-car-park airports shown in dark maroon).
| Airport | ADR change | Volume change | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glasgow | -18.1% | -9.2% | New, sharp deterioration – price and volume both down; not previously flagged and worth investigating on its own |
| Southend | -14.3% | +32.0% | Very small base; improved from -16.2% in the last update but still the weakest of the volume sites |
| Birmingham | -7.2% | +14.8% | Price falling, volume growing – competitive/supply pressure, consistent with prior reads |
| Luton | -5.3% | +29.2% | Same signature as Birmingham – falling price, strong volume growth |
| Cardiff (APH) | -5.0% | +6.4% | Small base; decline steadier than previously reported |
| Gatwick (APH) | -5.0% | +3.5% | Whole-window figure blends an early-year recovery with a deep summer trough that has since mostly closed – see Section 5 |
| Edinburgh | -4.8% | +7.9% | Decline has moderated sharply from -9.5% in the last update |
| Manchester (APH) | -4.4% | -0.6% | Worsened from -2.9% in the last update; see Section 6 |
| Leeds Bradford | -0.4% | +32.6% | Broadly flat |
| East Midlands | -0.3% | +20.7% | Broadly flat |
| Liverpool | 0.0% | +26.5% | Broadly flat |
| Bristol | +0.5% | +21.0% | Broadly flat, softer than the +2.9% seen in July |
| Stansted | +2.4% | +13.3% | Rate still rising, growth has moderated slightly |
| Newcastle | +2.7% | -7.5% | Growth has moderated substantially from +9.5% |
| Aberdeen | +3.3% | +21.5% | Rate still rising |
| Heathrow | +6.7% | +17.0% | Rate still rising, ahead of the wider market throughout |
Table 2 – Airport-level year-on-year comparison, 1 Jan – 7 Sep, ranked by ADR change. Exeter (+18.8%, n<500) omitted as too small a base to be meaningful, consistent with the treatment of Southend in the last update.
Glasgow records the largest fall in parking prices
The single most important change since the last update is Glasgow, which has gone from a mid-single-digit decline (-9.3%) to the sharpest fall anywhere in the network (-18.1%), with volume also down (-9.2%) – the same “price and volume both falling” signature previously reserved for Gatwick’s demand-side story, and not yet investigated. Edinburgh’s decline has more than halved.
Birmingham and Luton combine lower prices with booking growth
Birmingham and Luton remain the clearest examples of the competitive/supply-pressure pattern (falling price, strong volume growth) flagged in both prior reports.
Heathrow prices and bookings continue to rise
Heathrow recorded the strongest positive rate movement among the larger airports in the analysis, with sold ADR up 6.7% and booking volume up 17.0% year-on-year.
APH-operated airports are performing differently from the wider market
| Year | LGW + MAN + CWL | Rest of UK network |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | £7.63 | £8.42 |
| 2025 | £7.66 | £9.05 |
| 2026 | £7.29 | £8.94 |
| 2026 vs 2025 | -4.8% | -1.2% |
Table 3 – Combined sold ADR at APH’s three own-car-park airports vs the rest of the network, 1 Jan – 7 Sep each year.
The gap identified in the August update – APH’s own three airports underperforming the rest of the network – has not closed; if anything, it has widened slightly, from -4.2%/-1.0% to -4.8%/-1.2%. This remains the single clearest airport-mix finding in the dataset and is worth continued monitoring as its own line of enquiry rather than folding into the general UK narrative.
Gatwick has recovered from its summer low
Figure 4 – Gatwick vs Manchester, weekly year-on-year sold ADR, weeks 14–36 (early April to early September) 2026.
The August update reported Gatwick’s summer trough closing sharply from late July, reaching roughly -1.6% by week 34. The additional data confirms the recovery is real – the trough of -15.6% in week 27 (late June/early July) has not returned – but it has not fully resolved: week 35 touched +0.1%, then week 36 slipped back to -3.6%. August as a whole came in at -3.1% and the first week of September at -3.0%. The most accurate current read is that Gatwick has stabilised around a mid-single-digit year-on-year decline, having recovered most but not all of its summer trough, rather than having returned fully to flat.
Volume at Gatwick continues to run ahead of last year (+3.5% over the Jan–Sep window), consistent with the August update’s read that APH is capturing a bigger share of a passenger base that CAA data (to June) showed shrinking at Gatwick specifically.
Manchester remains the main area of concern
| Month | 2025 | 2026 | 2026 vs 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| January – May | – | – | +0.1% to +4.2% (broadly flat/positive) |
| June | £8.64 | £8.03 | -7.1% |
| July | £8.27 | £7.56 | -8.5% |
| August (full month) | £8.67 | £7.80 | -10.1% |
| September (1-7) | £8.92 | £8.40 | -5.8% |
Table 4 – Manchester sold ADR by month, showing the acceleration flagged in the August update and the position now.
Manchester’s decline widened every month from June to a full-August low of -10.1% – its worst month of the year- and worse than the -7.7% July figure available when this was first flagged. The first week of September shows a partial easing to -5.8%, but that is a single week of data and should be treated with the same caution applied elsewhere in this analysis to short windows; it is not yet safe to call this a turning point in the way Gatwick’s recovery can now be. Manchester remains the weaker-performing of APH’s three airports on the most recent data and is not a volume story: bookings are roughly flat year-on-year (-0.6% over the Jan–Sep window), so this looks like a genuine rate effect rather than mix or demand growth diluting the average.
Cardiff records a modest year-on-year decline
Cardiff has run a consistent -5% to -8% year-on-year decline through most of the summer months (April -5.7%, June -1.4%, July -6.8%, August -5.7%), a little steeper than the -3.4% figure in the August update, which covered a shorter window. Cardiff remains roughly 5% of Gatwick’s volume, so month-to-month figures are noisy, and the mismatch flagged previously – passenger growth (+18.2% to June) outpacing tracked-booking growth – is unchanged pending fresher passenger data. This is best treated as an open question rather than an explained pattern, as before.
Airport parking discounts continue to increase
Customers are paying further below advertised prices
| Product type | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | % bookings discounted, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off-airport | 11.5% | 13.8% | 14.3% | 69.9% |
| Meet & greet | 9.3% | 10.0% | 10.8% | 73.3% |
| On-airport | 8.2% | 9.2% | 9.8% | 75.4% |
Table 5 – Discount depth (list-to-sold gap as % of list rate) by product type, Jan–Aug each year.
Discount depth has continued to widen gradually across all three product types, exactly as reported in July – this is a sustained structural trend, not something the last six weeks have changed. Booking mix has also continued its gradual shift: off-airport share of bookings fell from 68.9% (2024) to 63.0% (2026, Jan–Aug), while meet & greet grew from 12.4% to 16.6%.
Airport parking stays are getting shorter
Average stay duration continued shortening, from 8.82 days in 2024 to 8.41 days in 2026 (Jan–Aug).
Customers are booking closer to their travel date
Average lead time also fell from 44.7 to 41.1 days. Both trends have already been identified as working to mask rather than explain the softening seen in blended rates.
What could happen to airport parking prices next?
Passenger numbers will provide the next important indicator
The August update corrected an earlier read of this analysis and identified Operation Epic Fury – the February–April 2026 Iran conflict – rather than the smaller June 2025 Israel–Iran episode, as the more relevant driver of the UK-wide inflection seen in early April 2026, based on a synchronised dip in both Gatwick and Manchester sold ADR in the week of 6–12 April, alongside the only negative month of CAA passenger growth in H1 2026. That finding is included here for completeness since it has not previously reached this report’s audience; it is unchanged by the new booking data, as it concerns a period already fully captured in the last update.
CAA published passenger data still runs only to June 2026 (the standard 6-week reporting lag), so the passenger/tracked-booking cross-check in the August update – which found Gatwick as the one major airport with genuinely falling passenger demand, and Luton, Birmingham and Edinburgh showing tracked-booking growth well ahead of passenger growth – has not yet been refreshed against July–August data. This should be prioritised once CAA’s next release lands, expected around late September, not least because it would now also cover the period of Glasgow’s new deterioration (Section 3) and the sharpest part of Manchester’s decline (Section 6), neither of which has been checked against demand data yet.
What APH will monitor next
- Investigate Glasgow specifically – its shift to the network’s sharpest decline (-18.1%, both price and volume down) is new since the last update and has not yet been looked at.
- Refresh the CAA passenger cross-check as soon as July/August data is published (expected late September), prioritising Glasgow, Manchester and Cardiff, none of which has been checked against post-June demand data.
- Continue tracking Manchester weekly rather than monthly for the next few weeks – one week of easing (-5.8%) is not yet enough to call a turning point, and the risk of over-reading a single short window cuts both ways, as the July report’s partial-month figures showed.
- Treat Gatwick as stabilised-but-not-fully-recovered rather than resolved; a further month of data would confirm whether week 36’s dip back to -3.6% is noise or a genuine plateau.
- Continue the quarterly ADR tracker, overall and by airport, as a recurring reporting view, as previously recommended.