Valet Park of America Uses Sighthound ALPR+ for Hospital Parking Access Control
A customer case study on how Valet Park of America connected Sighthound ALPR+ to hospital parking access control, enforcement visibility, and daily operations.
Snapshot
Company
Valet Park of America
Platform
PAYCE Technology
Industry
Parking management and transportation services
Clients
Hospitals, universities, casinos, resorts, government entities, condominiums
Use Case
Access control and parking enforcement via license plate recognition
Key Result
98%+ plate read accuracy, reduced exit congestion, improved enforcement visibility
Product
Sighthound ALPR+
The Problem
Valet Park of America manages parking operations across hospitals, universities, casinos, and large commercial properties. High vehicle volumes, demanding clients, and no margin for slow processes; that's the baseline.
Before ALPR+, parking operations relied on paper.
At valet locations, vehicle surveys were recorded by hand: plate numbers, damage notes, all of it. If a customer filed a claim, staff had to either know the exact ticket number or physically search through stacks of records to find it. That search often pulled managers away from everything else they were supposed to be doing.
At self-parking facilities, every driver had to stop, roll down their window, and scan a ticket or badge to get in or out. Functional, but slow. During a storm, or in the middle of summer heat, it was a real friction point, and one that reflected on VPA, not just the parking lot.
"It was a slow and manual process for valet. For self-parkers it was inefficient and an inconvenience."
The underlying problem was the same in both cases: no automated way to identify vehicles meant every transaction depended on a manual step, and those steps didn't scale.
Why Sighthound
VPA evaluated a number of vendors. The first filter was technical: their platform runs on Windows 10 IoT, which has meaningful compatibility constraints compared to a standard Windows environment. That alone cut most of the options off the list.
Sighthound made the cut, and then earned the deal.
Initial testing with still images showed strong recognition performance. But what actually closed it was the integration support. As Matt Jacobson, Innovation Facilitator at Valet Park of America, put it:
"The support from Sighthound for our integration was the final tipping point."
The Solution
VPA deployed ALPR+ as part of their kiosk software at a regional hospital with multiple entry and exit points, integrating it directly into their access control system via API.
At entry, plates are read automatically. Registered, authorized parkers get through without stopping, no badge scan, no ticket. If a plate is recognized but the parker isn't cleared for that location, the event is flagged and tied to the issued ticket. Unregistered plates are linked to the ticket at entry and tracked through the session.
At exit, the same logic runs in reverse. If a session is paid or validated, the gate opens automatically. No ticket scan on the way out.
Beyond gate control, ALPR+ feeds data into enforcement workflows, logging unauthorized entry attempts, linking plates to sessions, and enabling reporting on vehicle activity across the facility.
Camera setup was straightforward. Standard hardware, consistent lane positioning across locations, minimal adjustments after initial deployment.
The Impact
After go-live, VPA ran a manual audit: every plate read over a full 24-hour period, checked against captured images.
The results came back better than expected. Excluding a small set of state-specific specialty plates with known recognition challenges (currently being addressed), read accuracy exceeded 98%. Nighttime performance was a particular standout: even with headlights pointing directly into the camera lens, reads held up.
Operationally, the difference showed up at the exit gates. Compared to other VPA-managed locations, the hospital site sees fewer backups during peak hours. Authorized parkers move through without stopping. The manual credential scan is mostly gone.
The enforcement side has become just as valuable. The hospital now runs frequency reports on plate sightings, tracking how often and when specific vehicles appear. That data has helped identify patterns like employees regularly using patient and visitor parking. It's now embedded in their daily operations.
As Matt noted: "Based on the requests for additional reporting, we are certain that this has been incorporated into their daily operations and that they rely on the data produced."
In Their Own Words
"ALPR+ has been worth the investment both in the time and cost to expand the features of our access control system. We are in the process of renewing our contract and look forward to working with Sighthound in the future."
— Matt Jacobson, Innovation Facilitator, Valet Park of America
What's Next
The hospital deployment is the foundation. VPA is now building out fixed-camera enforcement solutions that go beyond gate operations, broader lot monitoring, permit validation, and compliance tracking across their parking assets.
ALPR+ started as an access control tool. It's becoming the core of how VPA manages and monitors vehicle activity at scale.
About Valet Park of America
Valet Park of America develops and operates parking management systems under its PAYCE Technology platform. In business for over 35 years, the company supports a wide range of clients, including hospitals, universities, casinos, resorts, condominiums, and government entities, while also providing on-site parking and valet services.
See ALPR+ in action
See how Sighthound ALPR+ supports license plate recognition for access control, parking operations, and vehicle activity workflows.
