Residential buildings especially will see a certain surge in parcel deliveries this Christmas, highlighting the growing demand for smart and reliable residential package lockers to ease the stress on buildings. Parcel delivery volumes that are already inflated by COVID will skyrocket this Christmas season as more people shop online, leading to sooner Christmas shipping cutoff dates for many couriers. Those with smart parcel lockers by Groundfloor are sure to be ahead of the curve when it comes to managing this sudden influx.
The pandemic has given rise to already inflated parcel volumes, with Australia Post reporting a 60% increase in delivery volumes in 2021 due to the pandemic. This comes as Australians showed an increase of 57% in year on year eCommerce sales for 2021. The pandemic has prompted many more Australians to shop online due to restrictions. This has led to an increase of 90% in online shopping since the beginning of the pandemic. Startrack cited a “major surge in deliveries” as a result of the pandemic.
Couriers are warning that the Christmas rush will further exacerbate parcel delivery numbers. Startrack predicts that the holiday season will see delivery volumes double 2019 statistics. Residential buildings are likely to be hit hardest by this rush as tenants conduct much of their Christmas shopping online. Residential package lockers provide a clean and effective solution to the issues posed by this recent surge to keep tenants satisfied.
Residential buildings that lack the amenity of parcel lockers are set to have a tough time this christmas with constant deliveries to the building. Without residential package lockers, concierge desks easily become overwhelmed with holiday-season parcels, leading to clutter and disarray. In addition, managing staff will have to cater to profuse deliveries and spend less time fulfilling their other responsibilities.
In addition, the COVID pandemic presents further challenges for residential buildings in grappling with the Christmas buzz. As Australia Post is processing more than 1 million parcels per day, incessant deliveries to residential buildings pose a significant COVID risk to both staff and tenants. Couriers are required to move throughout the whole building in order to deliver parcels, without a single, completely contactless point of delivery.
Residential package lockers help to manage the soaring Christmas deliveries that residential buildings are set to experience. By providing a single point of contact for couriers with large numbers of parcels, Groundfloor’s smart parcel lockers eliminate the need for copious individual deliveries and lessen the COVID risk of deliveries. As Australia Post reports that apartment deliveries are up 80% YOY for 2021, the need for a single drop off point to residential buildings is heightened.
Buildings lacking parcel lockers are also facing the issues of overcrowding of inadequate parcel dropoff points. Concierge desks especially are having difficulty in dealing with overflowing and unmanageable volumes, and many staff are having to contend with ungovernable numbers of packages. By designating an organised and smart parcel locker system within residential buildings, crowded and adhoc parcels are eliminated.
The situation is worse for buildings missing attended lobbies or concierge desks. Australia Post, Couriers Please and many other courier services have eliminated the need for a signature, meaning that parcels have had to be placed on doorsteps or unattended lobby desks. As a result, package theft has risen significantly, with as many as 44 package thefts being reported to Police every day. Residential package lockers by Groundfloor counter this issue by providing a completely secure system of parcel delivery and retrieval, that can be accessed 24/7 without the risk of theft.
Tenants are also having to face the long wait in line to collect missed parcels should they not be available when it is delivered. Missed delivery rates are 5 times higher in apartments than in houses, and during an already hectic time residents do not have time to travel to a Post office to collect their parcels. The round-the-clock retrieval and temporary storage of parcels until collection that residential package lockers provide makes them preferred by 98.6% of residential tenants surveyed as a collection method.
