One-click parking reservation at Polish airports

One of the problems while traveling by plane  is finding cheap and safe parking close to your airport of departure.
Since a few months I use NaviParking app which helps registered users making one-click parking reservation at the car parks located near every airport in Poland
In the app you can keep all your favourite  car parks including the contact details what is very convenient the day of traveling.
You don't have to bother about payment: you pay when you arrive at the car park or after returning from your trip while collecting your car. Weekly rate for parking can be as low as 10 euro making my travels by my favourite low cost airline Wizzair very affordable.

iTaxi app helps to join New Year party on time

Yesterday we were preparing for a New Year celebration. Around 22:00 PM my daughter started calling all taxi companies in Warsaw but without result. It looked like the whole Warsaw was on the way. To my surprise iTaxi app, I am using every time when I need a taxi in Warsaw, showed a taxi just one minute away from our home. Ordering a taxi was a matter of just one click. In this way my daughter and her two friends became new customers of iTaxi as they were very happy to join their party on time.

Will iTaxi be able to face the competition from Uber? Uber started its operations in Warsaw last August and I hope that iTaxi will not only maintain, but also increase its market share and it will be a very good alternative for those willing to pay more in return for a better travel experience.

I have just became a registered user of Uber app and will try the Uber travel experience soon.

Lexus navigation disappoints , NaviExpert shines

Recently I started to drive the Lexus CT 200h. This fuel-efficient hybrid car is really a pleasure to drive.

Before my travel to Poland -  a week ago - I asked a  Lexus dealer in Eindhoven  to install the newest June 2013 update of the navigation maps,  despite my experience with car navigations described in my previous post

To my disappointment I could not find a lot of places in Poland but it was not due to the bad maps. Apparently the Lexus navigation expects you to use the special Polish characters  which was not the case in my previous navigation which I used in my BMW. It was explained to me by a very helpful and kind  Lexus dealer in Krakow. 

However the way the selection of special characters works is far from being user friendly. First you need to enter a proper sign and then a character on the second screen. I find this very inconvenient especially while you are driving; I believe that the way BMW navigation handles special characters find is much better and safer.

On the way back from Warsaw to Berlin I was completely lost when my navigation tried to “take me away” from the A2 motorway, as the navigation was not aware of the almost 100km A2 motorway between Warsaw and Lodz (Strykow) which has been opened in June 2012!

After finally recognising the A2 motorway the POI of the Lexus navigation could identify only ONE petrol station and NO parking places anywhere on the  400km  A2 motorway from Lodz to the German border!

For that experience I “only” paid 180 Euro.

A good example of a very fast maps update is a Polish smartphone navigation NaviExpert which just two days after the opening of a new part of Expressway S2  connecting Warsaw with A2,  was able to navigate me through this road to the A2. Fortunately I had enough smartphone navigation apps allowing me to drive the fastest way back to Holland. 

This bad experience with the Lexus navigation only strengthened my believe, I described in my previous post,  that the future of the car navigation systems belongs to smartphone based navigation apps.
The recent Waze acquisition by Google shows the importance of engaging driving communities in updating, real time, the status of the road conditions and providing the maps updates.

Convenience of mobile payments in Poland

When you visit Poland you might be surprised with the number of mobile payments opportunities!
In my last post I wrote about the success of the IKO mobile payment app of the Polish Bank PKO BP.
There are however many more mobile payment opportunities...

While in Warsaw, I pay for the public transport using SkyCash. As a matter of fact you have a choice of three different mobile payments services: SkyCash, mPay, MoBILET. So far I haven't seen this many mobile payment services being advertised to pay for public transportion ticket as here in Warsaw.

This month Master Card Mobile has launched a special promotion offering public transportion tickets for 50% of the regular price! MasterCard Mobile is teaming up with several mobile payments services as SkyCash allowing you to also pay for parkings and cinema tickets. Unfortunately the current version of the MasterCard Mobile app only allows you to register with a Polish mobile number.

For over a year you can also buy Intercity  train tickets simply using your smartphone giving you the option to pay with your credit card but also using a variety of mobile payment services. The ticket you can download on your smartphone as the conductors can read it using similar scanners as we are used to at the airports.It saved me a lot of time during my frequent train travels from Warsaw to Krakow.

At the moment most of the mobile services requires you to have a  Polish mobile number, but as the volume of mobile payments  in Poland is growing dramatically I expect that mobile services will soon be available for international visitors.