Pre booking Weekend Parking at Melbourne Airport

I try to make overnight business trips go as smoothly as possible. I get all my tickets organised, pack early and lightly, even have a prepacked bag for toiletries and one for chargers and cables, and of course, I check in and book my airline seats online. I am not too bothered about saving time, I am more concerned about making my life easy. There's enough stress as it is. 

This includes airport parking. I hate all the hassle of long term parking - if finding a free space in a tarmac area the size of ten football fields wasn't bad enough, you then have to wait for the bus to turn up and stop at least a dozen times before you get to the terminal. I also hate getting ripped off, but since I'm not paying when it's a business trip, I hate the hassle even more. So I generally park in the ridiculously over priced short term area at Melbourne Airport (even if it's technically not allowed in the business expense guidelines book - which technically I have never seen.*)


I may have just stumbled across a solution to both my problems. Booking airport car parking online. You can pre-pay for your ticket, which means you don't have to worry about losing your parking ticket, or going to a paying booth when you return. You can also save bucket loads of cash, which is great should the internal audit people ever realise you are technically breaking their polices (which I technically still have never seen.*) 

My journey starts on a Sunday, so it helps that there are some weekend specials, but the weekend express short term parking at $79 offer saves you $36. The weekend special in the multilevel medium term car park saves you a massive $56. If you drove up and paid at the gates both those tickets would cost you $115. 

S pre-book online is definitely a good option, for time and money. 

* although the internal audit manager verbally once told me about the rules.