George Baker, the CEO and founder of Dallas-based ParkHub, was named Innovator of the Year at the National Parking Association (NPA) 2019 Innovation Awards. It’s the award’s top honor.

The winning facilities, companies, and individuals were all acknowledged at the organization’s 68th Annual Convention & Expo in Orlando, Florida. Each was noted for their various parking innovations. ParkHub was the only Texas company recognized. 

“The NPA Innovation Awards recognize companies and individuals who demonstrate the highest professionalism and parking best practices while using leadership and state-of-the-art technology to improve safety, sustainability and bottom line results,” NPA President Christine Banning said in a statement.

[Photo: Courtesy ParkHub]

The NPA recognized Baker for his work in advanced technology, big data, and parking space optimization. The organization said it was his “successful integration of data and technology into a powerful platform has resulted in rapid business growth.”

“The award is a testament to the vision with which I founded ParkHub—digitizing parking, one spot at a time, because you cannot manage what you cannot measure,” Baker told Dallas Innovates. 
“Today, with nearly 3.6M parking spots and having parked nearly 30 million vehicles to date, ParkHub remains dedicated to developing cutting-edge tools to optimize the world’s journeys.”

[Photo: Courtesy ParkHub]

ParkHub essentially makes “parking tech for people that make decisions.” Its solutions are designed for clients to have, in the palm of their hand, a birds-eye view of all parking lot operations. With its technology, ParkHub hopes to help parking operations boost revenue, cut costs, and wow guests.

It’s been a big year for Baker and his ParkHub team. The B2B parking tech provider completed a $13 million Series B funding round and acquired the business of a competitor. 

But you could say every year has been a big since ParkHub’s founding in 2010. The company built itself into a parking powerhouse by attracting customers like the Super Bowl (ParkHub’s technology has been used at the past four Super Bowls), AT&T Stadium, and American Airlines Center.

From 2010-2014, Dallas hosted back-to-back World Series with the Texas Rangers, an NBA championship with the Mavericks, and Jerry Jones opened up the “modern day coliseum” in Arlington. That brought many high-profile events—and an opportunity for Baker.

“I was able to leverage these demands and team up with ticket brokers and offer parking as a bundle,” he previously told Dallas Innovates. “As advance sales became popular, I saw an opportunity to stay ahead of the curve and pivot to a B2B-based model ParkHub is today by partnering with Ticketmaster in 2014 to provide the advance sale, and I became the authenticating hardware for them in parking.”

The past year, Baker said ParkHub has more than doubled its client base, delved into new verticals and use cases for our technology, acquired the mPOS division of SpotHero, its secured the first institutional round of financing.

Two products he predicts will revolutionize parking in the future are ParkHub’s IoT sensor, Pulse, and its Parking Data As A Service (DaaS), ParkHub.io. Baker thinks ParkHub’s impact will continue to be realized as parking becomes more and more synonymous with mobility. 

“I am honored to be recognized by the National Parking Association this year,” Baker says, “and to continue innovating alongside my team; ‘never in park, always in drive.'”