This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Salt Lake City International Airport ranks No. 1 among the nation's large hubs both for easy parking and terminal access.
That's according to research results from AirportXP, a mobile insights platform that allows travelers to share their experiences at the nation's 250 busiest airports. The rankings are based on more than 540,000 traveler responses during the year prior to June 12.
For ease of parking access, Salt Lake City had a positive approval rating of 84.5 percent. Among other large hub airports, it was followed in the rankings by Tampa, Fla. (76 percent); Charlotte, N.C. (74.5 percent); Detroit (71.4 percent) and Orlando, Fla. (71.3 percent).
For ease of getting to the terminal, Salt Lake City also ranked No. 1 with 87.8 percent approval. It was followed by Tampa (82.1 percent), Charlotte (78.9 percent), Denver (77 percent) and Orlando (76.8 percent).
"We are very lucky that we have such a close parking structure to allow people to walk over passenger bridges into the terminal," said airport spokeswoman Nancy Volmer.
She said parking will improve even more after ongoing airport reconstruction.
"Parking will be enhanced even further because the new terminal has a parking structure that will have twice as many parking spaces available," she said.
Volmer added that some recent programs may have helped Salt Lake's rankings, including adding premium reserved parking in its garage and the recent ability to also reserve space in economy parking lots.
The airport has vast economy parking lots that almost always have spaces available with shuttle service to terminals, plus numerous private parking lots nearby with shuttles.
Scott Ludvigsen, executive vice president of Phoenix Marketing International, which performed the AirportXP research, said such availability is important, which it realized again while doing a parking study for an airport where it found that a quarter of its passengers could not park where they planned because of full lots.
He said that leads to "a good number of frustrated passengers before they even enter the terminal."
Ludvigsen added, "Getting to an airport prior to a flight can be stressful." Good directional signs and adequate parking, he said, "can make a significant difference in a traveler's overall experience."