SSE Arena, Belfast

problem statement

The SSE Arena, Belfast is Northern Ireland’s premier entertainment venue. Since opening in December 2000, the site has welcomed millions of attendees to concerts, theatre shows and sporting events. The venue is home to the Stena Line Belfast Giants, Ireland’s only professional ice hockey club, which welcomes over 215,000 fans each season.

The SSE Arena has 1,500 on-site vehicle stalls across multiple car parks, and it operates on a first-come, first-served basis at peak event times.

In 2021, the renewal and upgrade of their parking system were planned to welcome back crowds after the pandemic, taking into account the increasingly digital habits everyone had adopted.

The client had two requests above all others: adding parking reservations to the Arena app, and simplifying the validation offer across all retail locations.

background

The SSE Arena is an indoor multipurpose venue with an audience capacity of up to 10,800 that has attracted many international performers for concerts, family events, theatre shows, comedy, sports events, and exhibitions and conferences.

The venue is owned by the Odyssey Trust Company and is conveniently located in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, close to major road, rail, sea, and air links. It is within walking distance of the city centre but also caters for multiple user groups who reach the venue with their own vehicles.

For their parking access control needs - a shared facility for the whole complex – the Odyssey has chosen Electro Automation Northern Ireland (NI) and HUB Parking Technology as partners for over a decade.

client requirements

• Scalable, compact, and efficient Jupiter parking units
• Quick ingress and egress times, especially at peak event hours
• ANPR for staff, contract parkers, and season ticket holders
• Credit card and mobile payment at all exit lanes
• Advanced monitoring and report scheduling capabilities to make data-driven decisions
• Integration of white-label JPass into the Arena’s existing app for visitors, adding parking reservation and contract management features
• Virtualisation of the JMS management system platform on the SSE Arena server
• Efficient validation system with J4M, for multiple retail locations within the SSE Arena
• Integration with CCTV system for staff to access real-time view from a single source

results

The ease of reach, reservation, and traffic flow management across the Arena’s parking structure has played a significant role in its increasing popularity. This successful outcome could not have been achieved without the excellent work of HUB partner Electro Automation NI. The combination of integrated mobile technology, modular Jupiter system, and overarching parking software system, JMS, now allows the Arena to offer a flawless parking experience to all visitors, granting fast entry/exit flows and optimising capacity.

The SSE Arena saw the benefits of virtualising the JMS Platform on their servers, which is a standard offering from Electro Automation and HUB. All staff on the network can access the management system provided they have access rights. Real-time parking data, monitoring, assistance, and reporting on all stations’ performance are just a few clicks away. JMS is the brains of the system, as it integrates all the parking facility touchpoints and services - ANPR cameras, lane units, validations, dynamic tariffs, CCTV cameras, the parking app, and much more.

All lanes are equipped with license plate recognition technology, which caters to staff, contract parkers, and season ticket holders, enabling a seamless customer experience. Exit lane devices accept credit card and NFC contactless payments, thus reducing queues at pay-on-foot stations and removing the need for staff involvement: an appreciated enhancement of the traffic flow exiting the car parks and a smoother customer journey.

Most businesses within the Arena offer lightning-fast parking validations through the digital platform J4Merchant (J4M), which is integrated with JMS and its tariff modules.

Arena staff use the standard scheduled reporting feature of JMS. The scheduled reporting feature of JMS enables specific system information and reports to be automatically generated and emailed, to any email address, at any time and on any recurring date required. This enables critical data to be available 24/7, allowing decisions to be taken based on real-time information.

As a true champion of JMS, Arena staff have fully embraced the benefits of its mobile version, JMS Mobile control app. The app enables their team to be completely mobile, achieving complete control of the parking system from any smart device, and also the agility to issue lost tickets or validated tickets directly to any pay station or exit lane, as well as catering for all other parking requirements, directly from their smart device.

Jupiter solution comprises of a plethora of industry-leading and innovative features, which ultimately increase operational efficiencies, provide a frictionless parking experience for customers and future-proof Odyssey investment.