Now, an app to find your car

In an Australian first, Westfield has launched a new mobile phone application that allows shoppers to find their parked car by simply entering its license plate number.

In an Australian first, Westfield has launched a new mobile phone application that allows shoppers to find their parked car by simply entering its license plate number.

The new feature has also given police their own fingertips technology to track down stolen and unregistered vehicles.

The app also lets users find out the opening hours of each retailer, see special offers and search for a store's location in the shopping centre.

The technology was implemented about a month ago and has been integrated into the company's app, which Westfield's general manager of marketing, John Batistich, said has had 108,000 downloads.

Batistich said that one of the issues Westfield found in some of its multi-level car parks was that people lost their cars. The new technology integrated in an update of the Westfield app for Bondi Junction aimed to fix this.

The app meant you would "never lose your car again", he said. It also showed you the number of car spaces available on each level in the Bondi Junction car park in real-time, allowing people to view if there were spaces available before they left their house.

"Effectively when you drive into the centre our cameras in the car park ... identify the number plate," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted him as saying.

"You then input your [license plate] number and it provides where the car is and it will take you there," he added.