For a visitor arriving at Gulskogen Shopping Center, the parking garage is the first experience of the day. At a facility handling thousands of visitors, that first impression matters.
Before they reach a shop, a restaurant, or a service desk, they need to find a space. How that goes sets the tone for everything that follows.
sensors installed
ceiling parking lamps
digital parking signs
digital pylons
The Challenge
Gulskogen’s parking facility spans several levels and accommodates a high volume of vehicles throughout the day. Without real-time information on availability, drivers had no way to know where spaces were free before driving through the facility to find out.
The layout made this particularly costly. The facility operates as a one-way system. A driver who reached an upper level without finding a space could not simply turn around — they had to exit and re-enter to check other levels. Each unsuccessful pass through the garage added time, frustration, and traffic to a facility already under pressure.
Reducing that circulation and giving drivers reliable information before they committed to a route became the central challenge.
The Solution
Sensade deployed a complete smart parking guidance system across all 798 spaces in the Gulskogen facility. Each space is equipped with a LoRaWAN wireless sensor that detects occupancy in real time and transmits data continuously to the Sensade platform.
That data feeds two layers of guidance. Inside the garage, 75 smart ceiling lamps signal whether spaces are available or occupied, allowing drivers to identify free spaces at a glance without driving every row. At entrances and ramps, 14 digital parking signs and 2 digital pylons show the number of available spaces on each level, so drivers can choose their direction before committing to a floor.
For the Gulskogen operator, the parking dashboard provides a live overview of occupancy across the entire facility, as well as historical data on how the car park has been used over time.
The Impact
Drivers arriving at Gulskogen are now guided directly to available spaces. Unnecessary circulation inside the garage has been reduced, and traffic flow has improved both within the facility and in the surrounding outdoor areas.
For visitors, a smoother arrival means the shopping trip begins without the frustration of a prolonged search. For the operator, a less congested facility is easier to manage and creates a better environment for everyone using it.
The occupancy data the system generates also provides a window into visitor behaviour more broadly. Patterns in car park usage — which days see the highest demand, which hours are consistently busy — reflect what is happening inside the center. That understanding can inform decisions about opening hours, staffing, and how the shopping center is run day to day.
In a retail setting, the time a visitor spends searching for parking is time they are not spending inside the center. Reducing that friction is not just an operational improvement. It is a commercial one.
Built for the Visitor Experience
Parking guidance at this scale is not a simple installation. It requires a system where sensors, lamps, displays, and platform all work together accurately and continuously. At Gulskogen, that system is now in place across every level of the facility.
Sensade delivered a complete guidance infrastructure that works from the moment a driver enters until the moment they park. That is what a good arrival experience requires.
