If you manage an office, you’ve probably heard it: “Why are those spaces always empty?”, “Why can they park and I can’t?”, and “Someone booked again and didn’t show.” Parking issues escalate fast, and Facilities ends up mediating a problem that feels personal, even when it shouldn’t.
In most cases, “parking hogging” is just a symptom of an allocation system that hasn’t kept up with hybrid work.
Here are the practical steps to fix it, reduce complaints, and get more value out of the spaces you already have, without adding more bays.
1. Replace seniority-based permanent spaces with flexible booking
Many offices still allocate permanent parking spaces based on seniority or job title. In a hybrid workplace, that often means your most valuable bays sit empty on quieter days, while employees circle the lot on peak days.
It also creates a perception problem: when people see “reserved” bays unused while they can’t park, frustration builds fast, even if nobody is doing anything intentionally wrong.
Senior managers getting all the parking spaces at the office make no sense. It doesn’t matter if you’re late! I have to leave home earlier, park further away and walk the rest of the way. We just got trodden on.
Switching to a shared model using a parking booking app, where employees book parking only on the days they’re coming into the office, makes access feel fairer and can dramatically improve utilisation. Instead of “owning” a space, employees access a space when they actually need it.
The key is to treat parking like any other shared workplace resource in hybrid work, similar to desks or meeting rooms. Once parking becomes bookable and visible, it stops being political and starts being operational.
2. Make fairness part of the system (not a debate)
If parking rules are informal, they’ll be interpreted differently, and every exception becomes an argument. One manager makes an exception, one employee assumes a space is “theirs”, one team books earlier than everyone else, etc.
Without structure, fairness becomes subjective. And when fairness feels subjective, complaints increase.
- Which car parks they can access and which spaces they can book
- How far in advance different groups can book
- Limits on how many future bookings someone can hold
- Special bay restrictions (accessible, EV charging, visitor, operational use)
But here’s the critical point: a written parking policy isn’t enough if it relies on manual enforcement. When rules live only in a PDF or intranet page, admins have to police them manually, exceptions get made inconsistently, employees test the boundaries, and enforcement starts to feel personal, which is why modern parking management requires system-backed controls.
Fairness stops being something Facilities has to defend and becomes something the system delivers automatically. That shift is what removes parking from workplace politics and turns it into an operational process.
One of the biggest hidden causes of “parking hogging” is booking without using it: people forget to cancel, plans change, or someone books “just in case,” creating artificial scarcity, even when there are technically enough spaces overall.
In practice, ghost bookings create a few painful outcomes:
- Peak days feel worse than they are: a handful of unused bookings can tip a car park from “tight” to “impossible,” especially midweek.
- People lose trust in the system: employees see “fully booked” status and assume it’s unfair, even if spaces are physically empty.
- Facilities gets dragged into disputes: once employees believe the system isn’t working, they escalate to admins for exceptions.
- Utilisation drops: empty bays remain locked up while genuine demand goes unmet.
The fix isn’t stricter messaging: it’s putting simple mechanisms in place that make the right behaviour easy and automatic.
When you reduce ghost bookings, parking instantly feels fairer, because availability starts matching reality.
4. Use data to make parking decisions objective (and defensible)
Without data, parking discussions become personal: “Why do they get a space and I don’t?” Decisions feel subjective, exceptions feel unfair, and Facilities teams end up stuck in the middle.
With data, the conversation changes. You move from opinions to facts, and that makes decisions easier to explain, easier to defend, and far less emotional.
With the right visibility, you can answer questions like: which days are the true peak demand days, which bays are underutilised, where no-shows are coming from, and whether certain rules are creating bottlenecks.
Data also helps you communicate clearly to stakeholders: “Here’s what demand looks like, here’s where capacity is being wasted, and here’s why we’re changing the rules.” That’s the difference between being seen as restrictive and being seen as responsible.
5. Make booking easy, so people don’t create informal “claims”
If booking is clunky, unclear, or time-consuming, people will create their own workarounds. That’s when you start seeing behaviours like leaving cones or personal items to “save” bays, arriving excessively early to secure parking, informally agreeing swaps in chat groups, or assuming a space is theirs because “I always park there.”
That’s how a “hogging culture” forms, not because employees are difficult, but because the system feels unreliable. When availability isn’t visible and booking isn’t simple, people default to self-protection.
The solution is straightforward: make booking so easy and transparent that there’s no incentive to game the system.
When employees can see what’s available and book in seconds, informal claims naturally disappear. The system becomes the single source of truth, not habit, hierarchy, or hearsay.
6. Take direct action for inconsiderate parking (without confrontation)
Sometimes, it is behaviour. And you need a way to handle it consistently without awkward conversations in the car park.
Even with strong rules and a fair system, there may be occasional misuse. For example, someone parking in the wrong bay, ignoring EV or accessible restrictions, repeatedly not showing up for bookings, or bypassing the process altogether.
If there’s no structured way to respond, two things happen: issues are ignored to avoid conflict, or enforcement becomes inconsistent and personal. Neither builds trust.
The aim isn’t strict enforcement, it’s consistent and fair accountability. Employees need to know that rules are applied consistently, not selectively.
That removes emotion from the equation. It also protects Facilities and Workplace teams from being seen as arbitrary decision-makers.
7. Add smart physical controls where needed
In some workplaces, rules and booking alone won’t fully solve misuse, especially in sites where non-booked drivers can still physically access the car park.
When people can take any bay regardless of bookings, a few things happen quickly:
- Booked spaces get taken anyway
- Employees lose trust in the system (“Why book if it doesn’t matter?”)
- Facilities teams spend time responding to disputes
- The car park feels chaotic on peak days
That’s where access control integration can make a big difference, by ensuring entry is aligned with booking permissions.
The benefit is simple: enforcement becomes automatic. Instead of relying on people to follow rules (or Facilities to police them), the site setup supports the process.
What fixing “parking hogging” actually looks like
If “parking hogging” keeps coming up in your workplace, it’s usually a signal that the system hasn’t kept pace with how the office now operates. Most of the time, it points to one (or more) of these root causes: allocations stuck in a pre-hybrid model, rules that exist on paper but aren’t enforceable day to day, no-shows and “just in case” bookings going unchecked, and a lack of reliable visibility into real demand.
The fix isn’t to police people harder, it’s to modernise the process. When parking becomes bookable, rules are applied consistently, unused bookings are released automatically, and Facilities has data to make decisions, behaviour improves almost on its own. Complaints drop because employees can see the system is fair, and the car park starts to run like an operational resource rather than a daily negotiation.
Before Ronspot
- Seniority-based spaces sitting empty on hybrid days
- Peak-day chaos (especially Tuesday–Thursday)
- Employees arriving early just to secure parking
- EV bays misused or blocked
- No visibility into who booked and didn’t show
- Complaints landing with Facilities or HR
- Manual spreadsheets or email approvals
- City-centre office parking under pressure
- Parking feels political. And Facilities teams become referees.
After Ronspot
- Flexible booking replaces permanent allocations
- Priority groups (e.g., accessibility, EV users, operational roles) protected
- Booking windows and credits regulate demand
- Auto-release frees up unused bays
- Real-time visibility via Parking Dashboard
- Clear reporting to support workplace decisions
- Transparent, fair access across the organisation
- Parking becomes structured, data-driven, and far less emotional.
For organisations across Ireland and the UK, where parking is often limited, costly, and difficult to expand, getting more out of the spaces you already have is usually the fastest and most cost-effective path forward. In many cases, the solution isn’t more bays; it’s better allocation, better controls, and better visibility.
See how Ronspot can solve your specific workplace challenges.
