usrentacar.co.uk ® Car Hire USA Blog

Hi all,

Our Cape Canaveral locations are extremely popular but they can be a little confusing for customers trying to work out which location is best for the port. Previously we put together this post, to help customers make the best decision but it looks like Florida may be about to make this all a little easier.

According to a report by Florida Today a $2 million consolidated car rental area has been agreed by port authorities. The report also states that staff have now been given permission to begin to contact Car Hire USA suppliers about the possibility of leasing space.

Mike Meekins, Port Canaveral’s senior director of cruise and port operations, confirmed that the port authorities had been contacted numerous times by car rental companies about opening a consolidated area. Mike confirmed that the port will have enough room for three car hire companies which would house a  total of 571 vehicles.

The proposed location is slated to be near Disney Cruise Line’s terminal 8, the new rental facility will include office space, a fueling station and a car wash,

Tom Weinberg, chairman of the Canaveral Port Authority, told Florida Today.

It makes Port Canaveral that much more desirable a location to sail, It will be a win-win for the port and the rental companies on-site and a significant advantage for our passengers.

The appeal of  a consolidated area is there for everyone to see and has been something we’ve expected for quite a while now, it will be interesting to see which suppliers are tempted to move fleet to this popular location.

Kind regards,

James

Hi all,

As we all know Disney (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom & Hollywood Studios) is the most popular theme park in Florida it attracts millions of visitors every year from all around the world, so much so they had to build their own hotels!

One questions I get asked a lot is, what’s the best way of collecting a Florida car rental if I’m staying at the Disney resort and I don’t want to collect from the airport?

Well our supplier Alamo Rent A Car have you covered here, they operate an office based within the heart of Disney called Disney Car Care. Now none of our suppliers offer a delivery service, so you will have to head to the office but here’s the good bit, Alamo will collect you.

Alamo run a shuttle service  that will pick you up from any Disney hotel and take you to the car care centre where you can complete your rental agreement and grab your car hire. Not only that but when you’ve completed your rental the shuttle will take you back to your Disney accommodation.

We advise anyone wanting to use this service to call the Disney car care office at least 24 hours before your pickup day to arrange collection. Please be aware that in busy periods this service may not be available.

You can call Alamo’s Disney Car Care on 407-824-3470 or alternatively you could ask your hotel to give them a call

Kind regards,

James

Morning all and happy New Year,

With 2014 firmly into its stride we’re beginning to get information regarding the car hire USA Fleets for 2014. First to send me the information is Dollar Rent A Car.

Industry experts (and myself) believe 2014 will be a very interesting year for Dollar,  their parent company Hertz hopes to have them full integrated into their system within quarter 1 which will mean that a company which had total  access to roughly 170,000 vehicles in the U.S. will now have access to approximately 700,000 cars. What does this mean? Well it should mean we’ll see a lot more competitive and flexible Dollar Rent A Car.

We’ve already been witness to the “Hertz effect” here at U.S. Rent A Car, average user review scores have risen year on year and an amendment in their customer services department has seen a massive increase in response times, which we hope will continue over 2014.

Dollar Rent A Car Fleet Guide

Now as it states above this is only for guidance and is not a guarantee of make, model, luggage capacity, MPG etc but it does give a great indication to what vehicle types you can expect and in which category. The most important one for us as its the question we’ve asked the most, is the convertible category…. and it looks like Dollar Rent A Car will again have the most Ford Mustangs on fleet for 2014.

Kind regards,

James

Hi all,

Back in 2012 Dollar Rent  A Car were one of the only suppliers that required customers on our Silver rate to pre-purchase their fuel upon arrival. Customer’s rightly didn’t like this as airport petrol prices can be more expensive than from a station.

Therefore after a lot of badgering from ourselves, they amended their fuel policy and introduced a new ruling in August. This fuel policy required the customer to purchase the prepaid fuel from the supplier as usual however the customer could receive a full refund if they produced proof of a receipt from a petrol station within 10 miles of the airport showing the car to be refuelled fully.

Customers reacted warmly to this new policy and its been running successfully for just under half a year but both ourselves and Dollar weren’t totally satisfied. With 2014 approaching and Hertz very firmly in the driving seat (excuse pun) Dollar Rent A Car took another look at their petrol policy and have decided to revise it once again. This time I think they’ve got it spot on!

So as of the 01/01/2014, any customer collecting a Dollar Rent A Car vehicle booked with us, on our silver rate will not be required to pre-purchase their first tank of fuel on pick up. The vehicle will be collected with a full tank of petrol (or close to full) and the vehicle must then be returned at the same level. Failure to return the vehicle at the same level will result in a charge to your card for the fuel and a small service surcharge.

The prepaid fuel option locally will still be made available to customers and Dollar point out that the prepaid option does have its benefits;

• Saves time upon return
• All charges on one receipt
• No having to stop to purchase gas on return

Here at U.S. Rent A Car we’re just happy that Dollar have introduced a much easier and customer friendly way to petrol. We definitely believe this has been influenced by Hertz and hope this continues.

Kind regards,

James

Hi all,

Our good friends at Auto Rental News have just released their annual look at the Car Hire USA market. I always find these statistics interesting and this year even more so, as it gives us our first look at how Avis Budget have done with their acquisitions of Payless and Zipcar and of course  the new Hertz Dollar Thrifty brand.

2013 has definitely been a buoyant one for the car rental industry, total revenue for the year is estimated to hit $24.546 billion, a 3.9% increase year on year. The revenue increase could be put down to a gradual increase in fleet which has risen to  1.95 million, a 4.8% increase over the average fleet size in 2012.

Chris Brown, Executive Editor said;

The car rental industry in America is on solid footing. While revenues have reached an all-time high, RPU remains robust, even in the face of rising new car costs and softening used car values.

Here are the stat’s;

As you can see privately owned Enterprise who also operate the Alamo and National brands have almost 1 Million cars in operation which easily makes them the number 1 car rental company in America. These stat’s also show how important it was for Hertz to purchase Dollar Thrifty to cement their position as the number 2 company ahead of Avis Budget.

Another thing these stat’s highlight is the huge gulf between the top 3 car rental companies in the U.S. and everybody else… the number 4 spot is taken by Advantage Rent A Car, a company who has recently filed for bankruptcy!

For me the USA car hire market is in need of deeper competition and whoever gets Advantage Rent A Car could possibly mount a challenge given time.

Kind regards,

James

Hi all,

Just a very quick post to list 2014 public holidays in the U.S. We posted a similar blog for 2013 and it proved to be very popular so hopefully some of you will find it interesting.

This year we’ve bulked out the list with holidays specific to states and included the day the holiday falls upon.

As of 2012, there are eleven federal holidays in the United States, ten annual holidays and one quadrennial holiday (Inauguration Day). Pursuant to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 (effective 1971), official holidays are observed on a Monday, except for New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Hi all,

Being a company that specialises in providing Car hire in the USA is a tricky thing logistically, not only do you have to be competitive, have great locations and purchase the correct amount of vehicles (not supplier wants cars sitting around) you also have to provide great customer service.

Today’s post is about 5 things I think customer want that would make the perfect car rental supplier.

Pricing

The old adage “you get what you pay for” rings true in car rental. I think customers would pay a little more if they were guaranteed a higher level of service. If car rental company A is £40.00 more expensive than car rental company B than I think its only fair that the customer gets £40.00 worth of better service.

Makes and Models

We can never guarantee make or model of  the vehicles our suppliers provide, they buy from a selection of manufactures and therefore they can differ location to location. This has always been the case.

What the suppliers could do though, is provide more than one make or model that are likely to fall into that category to give the customer a wider idea of the likely model they will get. It would be pretty easy to manage, as the supplier will already have this information stored within their systems.

The advantages are pretty clear, the customer is able to select the correct vehicle to suit their needs and for the supplier it adds a opaque quality that is missing.

Quicker Queues

Pet peeve for everybody, Queuing!!!

It really isn’t that hard to speed this section up, we live in a word of high speed wifi. I recently wrote a post about how I would improve that car rental office, if we have to queue at least make it interesting and above all quick!

Completely Eliminate Hard Sell

Although hard sell tactics are very rare, just that fact that a small minority of staff do this leaves a very bad taste in customers mouths and promotes a negative vibe towards collection.

We’ve always been a big supporter of rewarding staff based on customer services instead of sales. Is it ever worth selling a customer something they don’t require and losing them forever?

Open Up

At the moment we (U.S. Rent A Car) have access to certain parts of the suppliers inventory and booking process. It would make things a lot easier if the supplier opened up more of their information to us. For example Rental Agreements, in this example if we had access to this information after the customer had signed we could make them aware of any additional charges that were due. It would also speed up customer service queries and lighten the workload for the suppliers CS team.

These are just a few basic idea’s on how to improve the car rental experience. I’d love to hear what you think and if you have any ideas of your own?

Kind regards,

James

Hi all,

I know this sounds like an April fools gag but Hertz have developed technology that they will look to roll out to 220 of its car hire USA locations that will greatly reduce its use of water in the maintenance of its fleet.

Hertz have hooked up with Green Team Partners LLC a company devoted to tackling problems with water conservation to  develop a non-toxic, biodegradable and hyper-concentrated waterless car wash formula and dispenser.

Hertz Chairman and CEO Mark Frissora said;

Managing one of the largest car rental fleets in the world requires a significant amount of car washing. Moving to a waterless car wash system is another innovative way Hertz is addressing both its sustainability and business needs.

Max Krumer, president of Green Team Partners added;

We were very excited to bring our processes and products to Hertz and even more thrilled when Hertz adopted our waterless detailer program for its fleet. To see a large organization put such great emphasis on going green and investing in sustainability efforts is amazing, and we’re glad to be part of Hertz’s efforts.

How does it work?

Car’s can be washed with 6 to 8 ounces of the new environmentally friendly, fully biodegradable solution. Once the solution is sprayed onto the car, the specially formulated molecules lift dirt particles from the car’s paint. It takes approximately 8 minutes to complete the process and will save 130 million gallons of car-wash water annually.

Impressive stuff from Hertz, granted not the most exciting post I’ve ever written but I thought it was important to feature car rental companies trying to counterbalance their global footprint.

Kind regards,

James

Hi all,

It’s a busy time of year here at U.S. Rent A Car, we’re in full negotiations mode with all our suppliers and a few new one’s. The feeling here is that 2014 is going to be a busy one and most of the suppliers are speaking about next year in very positive terms, which makes a nice change after the 7 or so years.

We’re working on a few new things ourselves, we’ve just signed off a new design for our specialist Florida Car Hire site which when completed will look pretty impressive, we’re talking about a redesign for usrentacar.co.uk which we may start work on in quarter 2 of 2014 and we may well open a few dedicated website for other global markets.

With car rental fully on our minds I thought I’d display a few positive reviews about the service being offered by our current suppliers. The reviews below are the last 5 100% reviews received by ourselves, they are all based on pick up’s in November 2013.

Mr A Hardie collected from Sixt Rent A Car out of  Orlando International Airport.

Quality vehicles at an economical price

Mr S Lydall collected with Alamo Rent A Car from their Disney Car Care location.

Picked up from Disney car care centre. Never any pressure selling from there, and they send a van to collect you. Dropped off at the Dolphin which took minutes and was handy for where we were going next. Car was a good size for two of us and was very clean.

Mr W Statham collected from Dollar Rent A Car our of Las Vegas International Airport.

Having shopped around this was the first time we used this website,it wasn’t until we collected our vehicles that we could see the quality of the cars we had booked,we had an excellent experience at the check in desk the staff were very helpful and friendly, Good value for money much cheaper than using travel agents for vehicle hire. Would use again and would certainly recommend to friends

Mr C Van Kleef collected with Dollar Rent A Car from their Kissimmee downtown location.

exellent!

Mr D Ward picked up with Thrifty Car Rental from Orlando International Airport.

Excellent staff at the arrivals desk. Paperwork completed very quickly, pre paid for the fuel which was as cheap if not cheaper than outside the airport. New model car with all the usual refinements on. On returning the car it was again quick completion of the paperwork by the friendly staff.Would certainly use usrentacar on our next visit to Florida.

I love reading 100% reviews, it makes me smile its exactly how we think every car rental should go.

Kind regards,

James

Hi all,

Real innovation in car rental is very similar to the Hare and Tortoise tale, however in this metaphor the Tortoise never actually finishes the race. In other words its slow. We see some companies start to sell new products like GPS units and recently tablets but real innovation is very rare.

Most car hire USA companies point to their websites for innovation but for me the majority are missing a trick by not reinventing the pick up location. How and where the customer collects their vehicle from hasn’t changed in decades, its the usual, turn up at a desk in the airport or off airport, get in the queue, stand there until its your go.

When we speak to our customers or read their reviews the number one gripe is queuing. Most expect a slight queue but after sitting on a plane for 8 hours a car rental queue of 20 minutes can feel like 20 hours…

How I would change the pick up location

Now this wouldn’t work for every location, but for some of the larger offices it would leave a lasting impression. Abandon the queue system as we know!

Yep I know it sounds impossible but here’s what I’m thinking, at Disney they operate something called a FastPass system, this system allows for virtual queuing, basically you run your ticket through a machine and it gives you a time slot to return the ride, giving you the freedom to explore the rest of the park, eliminating the need to queue.

Rental car companies could operate this similar to a number at a deli counter, freeing up the customer to explore. At the same time you could issue rental agreements so the customer has time to fully read and understand their terms, you could offer this online to match rental agreement to tour market.

But what’s to explore at a car rental location?

Well this is where locations need to think outside the box a little, car rental companies are not solely reliant upon the initial hire fee, they offer additional extra’s like Sat Nav’s, tablets and additional insurances, why couldn’t they display these in a kind of shop environment, allowing customers to browse these add on’s without the need for hard sell?

Why not give customers safe access to the car parks where the suppliers could show off some of their fleet including specific spec in a way that might tempt the waiting customer in to upgrading or at least enquiring about it?

I’ve heard of a few locations, mainly Hertz ran which offer customer the chance to charge up their phones etc at charging stations. I think this is a great idea and goes that little bit further to adding goodwill.

An area where the kids could play or even a shop where the supplier could sell car related items like maps, driving gloves that sort of thing.

When you’re up

When you’re number is up or you mobile is buzzed to let you know its time to collect your rental, you could easily take anything you’ve decided to purchase up with you, which is scanned on to your rental agreement. Seems pretty easy.

With USA car rental dominated by just 3 companies its time for 1 of them to step up and offer the customer something totally different.

Kind regards,

James