Client

Kenya Airports Parking Services (KAPS LTD) was created in 1999 and is East Africa’s premier solution provider of car parking, access control and revenue management systems. Their parking systems process over 50,000 parking transactions across the region.

Challenge

In 2010, KAPS was chosen as the independent revenue collection agency for the Mara Conservancy, a Kenyan non-profit organization that manages the Northwestern sector of the Maasai Mara National Reserve (Mara Triangle). The park stretches over 1,500 sq km (580 sq miles) and is world-famous for its exceptional wildlife – making it one of the preferred destinations for safaris in Africa. Maasai Mara boasts a wide range of activities and several camps, with over 145 000 visitor yearly, who usually stay for a minimum 3 to 4 days.

Due to the size of the reserve, the Mara Conservancy was looking to implement an efficient parking and access control system to ensure all visitors pay the appropriate fee. To meet this need,  KAPS deployed an access control and revenue collection application which was used to issue tickets and process payments at the front entrance and then control visitors’ tickets in the park.

Officers patrolled the park and checked people’s tickets by scanning them. They were equipped with mobile phones, which actually turned out to be inadequate. The devices were complex to oversee as the authorities had no way to manage them remotely. As there was no control over the devices, users could download any application they wanted, implying the devices could be used for non-work related purposes, thus creating data shortage issues.

Although the application itself worked well, the staff quickly realized their need for a more professional solution, with dedicated devices that could be controlled remotely.

Solution

In 2015, KAPS decided to partner with Famoco  to solve the issues resulting from the use of mobile phones. Our dedicated Android devices are managed over the air and integrate the KAPS access control and revenue collection solution, thus solving the problem of data shortage and remote management. When entering the park, visitors pay a fee and receive a ticket with a QR code in exchange. In the park, officers use Famoco dedicated devices to quickly scan tickets to verify their validity and process payments when new tickets need to be issued. The devices are also easy to deploy and manage over-the-air, giving authorities full control over their fleets.

Results

Famoco devices have been in use for around 2 years and in that time have processed over 1 million transactions. 5 are currently in use in the Maasai Mara Reserve and have made the process of revenue collection and access control a lot easier – which was essential to efficiently deal with an increasing number of visitors.