The holiday season brings many things: great smell wafting from the kitchen, colorful decorations, brightly wrapped packages, laughing children, and the obligatory schlep to various relatives’ homes.
More and more, people are turning to car rentals for non-traditional uses. For example, it used to be that only business and vacation travelers rented cars to get to and from their hotel to meetings or sightseeing destinations.
Now, it is commonplace for consumers to rent cars for shorter trips from their home. This is frequently done in order to spare the family car the mileage and often, to access a larger car to better accommodate the whole family and all of the junk that goes with them.
These increased rental car needs have led to projections that the global rental car market is set for growth. The companies that are best poised to take advantage of this growth appear to be those that take less traditional paths to accommodate these new rental car consumers.
For example, Enterprise Car Rental (www.enterprise.com) has made a concerted effort to place many Enterprise Car Rental locations throughout suburban neighborhoods. This is a departure from many companies who primarily do business around major airports.
Yet another segment of the rental car market set to explode appears to be the exotic car rental market. Many people aren’t even aware that you can rent a Lamborghini or rent a Bentley, but it is actually a pretty well-developed market (see www.rentexoticcars.net).
Additionally, a slowing economy can actually help exotic car rental agencies as fewer customers are willing to take the plunge into exotic car ownership, but still want to get behind the wheel of their dream car for those special business or personal occasions.
“We feel that as word gets out about our services and the types of cars that we provide access to, people will become our customers in ever-increasing numbers,” says Tom Warren, Genral Manager of DFW Elite Auto Rental (www.dfweliteautorental.com).
The Dallas exotic car rental agency attempts to attract and keep customers by offering a large assortment of hard to find exotic cars and overwhelm their clients with conveniences like car delivery to the site of the customer’s choosing.
Indeed it appears that more and more consumers are renting cars for ever-expanding reasons. Those companies that are able to keep ahead of the curve on consumer demands should fair well, even in these tough economic times.
