It’s fairly common in the US at hotels and some parking garages, especially in bigger cities.

It can be nice if you’re in a hurry or worried about walking alone in a parking garage at night.

But yes, it can be annoying, especially because you’re expected to tip them in the US too.

Pal, I've seen wallet parking across several countries in the world. Latin American, Western, and Eastern Europe, I just got curious about where you live to never have seen it.

And to answer your question: No, valet parking is usually useful because the parking place is far from where you're going (usually a hotel or restaurant). Having the valet saves you the walk from the lot to the place where you're going. It is even more useful when it's raining and you're having a formal dinner.

The wait for getting the car back is also pretty short because someone radios a driver already in the parking lot to bring your car in most circumstances.

Sometimes it's a lazy rich person tax, but sometimes it's required because there's limited parking, and the valets can jam the cars in double-parked (or more), since they can shuffle them around as needed.

At my work at the time (pre-pandemic) we used to have an EV valet - attendant would take your car, park it and then move it to an EV spot when one opened up, then put it back into normal parking - you would get a text with the location on each move.

It was quite nice and let me focus on work instead of worrying about charging and only initial paperwork (we had QR stickers on the car and keychain QR).

That's about the only time I've used a valet regularly.

Most places that I have used a valet they had a number you could dial and they'd bring your car up for you then callback when it was ready.

It's common in denser cities, primarily with two applications:

1. at parking garages so that cars can be double- or triple-parked. This is by far the most common use case for valets today. At these lots, you actually do have to pay more (or arrive early) for a spot that doesn't require valet parking.

2. at high-end restaurants or other similar venues where there is no immediately nearby parking and limited or no street parking. The valet drives the car to a lot or garage a few blocks away and returns it to you when they are done. You can almost always opt out of these, although you may or may not save money by doing so and at some places it can be worth it to just pay up and deal with the inconvienance because the nearest parking is a bit far.

I've also seen it as a weird status symbol thing in cases where it's entirely unnecessary, primarily used by people who have never had to put up with #1 or #2. Think up-scale hotels but located where parking is extremely ample. I think that only exists because there's a general impression outside of super-dense cities that valets are a "fancy" thing because they are only really common in "fancy big cities". (Which, to be fair, owning a car in midtown definitely makes a person fancy in some sense even if I'd never ency that person :p)

But actually, for the most part, valets are not a fancy optional service. They are mostly a non-optional service that you have to pay more or go to significant inconvenience to not use.

Very common. My work in the big city used to require us to use it when driving to take advantage of commuter parking benefit for the other reasons mentioned. Also use it at shopping malls where the valet price is the same or substantially similar to regular parking.

Surprisingly many of them use a text system so you text them to the number they confirmed with like 10 minutes before you need your car and they have it waiting — very convenient.

Also use it at big events like operas or plays or whatever where parking is awful but valet, despite being a little expensive, puts you right up at the front door when walking in and then they get it when you leave.

A friend had a car that required that you hold a magnet at a very specific spot in the back of the arm rest to be able to start ignition. Don't think he ever tried to valet that.

Had a valet ignore a huge, printed instruction taped over my steering wheel on how not to food my car (leave it running for at least 60 seconds). Sure enough, they flooded it really bad trying to start it over and over. Killed the battery. Never used a valet after that.