FindaHireCar.com

Avis is the most visible car rental website on Google UK organic search results for searches related to car hire whilst travel portal Travel Supermarket is the most visible site in Google's paid search results according to a recent study by Findahirecar.com.

For the study of car rental websites, researchers analysed the sites that appeared in the top ten organic and sponsored search results for the most popular search terms relating to car hire in English such as "car hire", "hire car" and "hire a car" on Google.co.uk.

After Avis, other global car hire providers dominate the top ten organic searches with Europcar in second place, Enterprise Rent-a-car third, Hertz fouth, Auto Europe eigth, National Car Rental ninth and Thrifty ranked in tenth place on Google. Notable absentees from page one of Google were German car rental giant Sixt in eleventh place, Budget in 13th and Alamo in nineteenth place.

There were three car rental portals in the top ten, the most visible being EasyCar in fifth place, followed closely by Travel Supermarket in sixth and Holiday Autos in seventh place.

The paid listings on google showed tare more balanced mix with half of the top ten most visible results being price comparison websites. After TravelSupermarket in first place these include RentalCars in second, Kyak in fifth, CarRentals.co.uk in seventh and Compare Car Hire in tenth.

The car rental providers with the most visible paid advertising were Budget in third place, Auto-Europe in fourth, Avis in sixth, Economy Car Rentals in seventh and Hertz in tenth place. This reflects the fact that the car hire brands are more visible in the organic results meaning less advertising on Google is necessary.

According to JD Power's North American car rental satisfaction survery published earlier this month, price remains the primary deciding factor for customers renting a car.

"We asked people how much they paid as an average daily rate for a rental vehicle," said Rick Garlick, of JD Power's hospitality and travel group. "There were two tied at the top; Hertz and Avis with a median of $50 a day, followed by National at $48 and all the way down to Thrifty at $37 a day. "Despite being one of the highest-priced rental agencies, National is actually at the top of the leaderboard in terms of satisfaction with cost and fees," said Garlick.

This satisfaction helped push National to the top spot in overall satisfaction in this year's survey. The survey looked at cost and fees, pick-up process, return process, rental car quality, shuttle bus/van and reservation process. Based on these six factors the company achieved a score of 809 (on a 1,000-point scale), beating last year's winner Enterprise by just 10 points.

"Even with its relatively high cost, National scored well", says Garlick, "by easing the pick-up process through its Emerald Club program, which allows frequent renters to choose any car on the lot that conforms to the class of car they reserved." "You not only bypass the counter, but you pick the vehicle you want," he said. "If you like a red car or a brown car or you want four doors instead of two, you have that freedom of choice. Of course you're more likely to be satisfied if you picked it." 

He added that customer satisfacion is so much more than merely offering a low price: "You have to have a competitive price as a point of entry, but whether it's rental cars or hotels or anything else, people who buy on price tend to be much more critical consumers."

According to the survey, overall satisfaction was 756 for customers who selected their hire car supplier based on price compared with a score of 828 for those customers who chose a company based on good customer service.

"It's the perception of you get what you pay for," said Garlick. "If you're renting a vehicle from Rent-A-Wreck, you're not going to be as happy as you'd be if you rented a nicer car even if you paid less money."

Recent research by findahirecar.com has analysed the online reputation of car hire businesses listed on leading customer feedback website Review Centre.

Review Center is a community of consumers sharing their product and services experiences. With over 1 million reviews and growing, the website is one of the largest of it's kind in the world.

The top five car rental services according to the site are RentalCars.com, Atlas Choice, Economy Bookings, CarRentals.co.uk and Argus Car Hire. The rankings are based on the star ratings the company has received, the number of customer reviews and how recent the reviews are.

The number one ranked company RentalCars.com scored an average of 4 stars out of a possible 5 from 16,890 consumer reviews. A total of 85.4% of users recommended their service to others. Atlas Choice came scored with a rating of 3.8 stars from 11,083 user reviews. Nearly 78 percent of consumers recommend them. Economy Bookings ranked third with an average score of 4.6 out of 5 stars from a total of 2,224 reviews. An impressive 90.6% of reviewers recommended the website. CarRentals.co.uk has received 1,483 reviews who score an average of 4.4 with a 95.7% recommendation rate. Argus Car Hire came fifth with 3.8 stars from 1,296 user reviews and a recommendation rate of 81.3%.

The leading car rental brands had mixed feedback from users of Review Centre with Alamo coming out on top and Budget receiving the poorest customer feedback. Alamo scored 3.5 out of 5 from 666 reviews with 67.3 percent of users recommending them. National Car Rental has received 167 reviews on the website with an average score of 1.9 out of 5. Nearly 26 percent of users recommended them. Enterprise Car Rental scored 1.8 out of 5 from 376 reviews and 22.3 percent of users recommended their services to others. Thrifty Car Rental scored 1.5 stars from 255 customer reviews. Only 13 percent of these users recommended the service. Hertz scored a lowly 1.4 out of 5 from 494 reviews and 10.5 percent of users recommend them. Avis scored 1.3 out of 5 from 388 reviews with a 10.3 percent recommendation rate. Europcar scored the lowest of the leading brands with 1.2 out of 5 from just 62 reviews. Only 7 percent of users recommended them. Finally, Budget Car Rental has received 318 reviews an an average star rating of 1.2 out of 5 with just 6% of users recommending them, the lowest percentage of all the leading brands.

Malaga Airport (airport code: AGP), officially known as Malaga Costa del Sol Airport, is the fourth busiest airport in Spain behind Madrid Barajas Airport, Barcelona El Prat and Palma de Mallorca.

It is very important for Spanish tourism as it is the main airport serving the Costa del Sol which includes the popular tourist denitations of Torremolinos, Benalmadena, Fuengirola, Mijas, Marbella, San Pedro de Alcantara, Estepona, Manilva, Casares and Sotogrande.

The Airport has flight connections to 60 countries including 100 cities in Europe. In 2011 it handled 12.5 million passengers and 102,000 aircraft movements. Ryanair is the largest operator with 21 percent of flights followed by Easyjet with 15 percent. The third largest operators are Vueling, Iberia and Air Brlin each with 7 percent of flights.

The busiest route is London Gatwick with 23 percent of flights folowed by Manchester Airport with 12 percent then Dublin and Paris Charles de Gaulle, each with 11 percent of flights. London Stansted is the fifth busiest route with 8 percent of flights from Malaga Airport.

Malaga Airport car hire is very reasonably priced due to the very competitive market. There are 23 car rental companies at Malaga Airport, of which 9 are based in the airport buildings. These are Autos Lido, Avis, Europcar, Goldcar, Hertz, National Atesa, Record go Rent-a-Car and Sixt. The car rental desks are located on the groud floor of terminal 3.

The offsite car hire companies include Aurica Crown, Autolink rent a car, Car Gest Auto rent, Centauro Rent a Car,  First, Global Car Hire, Helle Hollis, Marbesol, Malaga Car, National Car Rental, Niza Cars, Pepe Car, Tony's Rent a Car, Top Rent a Car and Yellow Car. Most of these offsite companies are located in Avenida Garcia Morato which is the main road connecting Malaga airport with the N-340 motorway.

Enterprise Holdings, who own the Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent-A-Car brands have announched that they are to hire more that 10,000 new recruits in the next twelve months.

The company operates the largest fleet of vehicles in the world with 1.3 million cars and vans available for rent from their 8,000 airport and city locations world wide.

The company will recruit 8,500 college graduates into their managament trainee program and more than 1,500 interns. Other full-time time positions will be available in information technology, accounting, administration and support roles. The new roles will be available at the company's head office in St. Louis in the United States as well as at their regional offices throughout the world.

“We put people in a position to succeed immediately, and we promote almost exclusively from within – that makes Enterprise an ideal choice for those just beginning or reinventing their careers,” said Marie Artim, vice president, talent acquisition, at Enterprise. “For more than five decades, thousands of highly motivated, customer service-focused employees have been rewarded with plenty of opportunity and enjoyed tremendous careers within our company.”

“Our senior leadership team, including President and CEO Pam Nicholson, all started out in entry level positions at Enterprise,” said Artim. “And because we promote from within up to our senior ranks, management trainees are crucial to building the next generation of leaders at our company.”

Steve McCarty, Enterprise’s vice president of training and talent development, added, “Enterprise’s strong emphasis on cultivating our talent from within means that new employees receive hands-on training from very capable mentors who’ve been in their shoes. There’s no substitute for world class formalized and on-the-job training from seasoned managers who know the business inside and out, and that’s precisely what we offer our management trainees and interns to help ensure that they’re successful right from the start.”

Avis Budget Group, recently announced that they are testing an advanced new fuel measurement and billing system.

The pilot project is part of the group's commitment to be customer led and service driven business. The new technology accurately measures a car's exact fuel level on collection and return to the nearest one tenth of a gallon or 0.5 litres.

This contrasts with the normal practice accross the car hire industry of visually looking at the fuel guage on the car when the car is collected and agin when it is returned and noting the reading manually. The level of detail on car fuel guages varies by manufacturer but normally shows increments of one quarter or one eigth of a tank.

"Rental vehicles are generally provided to customers with a full tank of gasoline, and renters are asked to return the vehicle in the same condition. If and when customers return vehicles to us with less gas than they left with, we impose a per-gallon charge for the missing gas and the refueling service we provide," said Tom Gartland, president of Avis Budget Group. "This new technology allows us to be more transparent and precise in the fuel measurement process. In fact, should there be more gasoline in the tank at the time of return than at check-out, the system will record it and a credit to the customer will be issued."

The technology is being tested in select vehicles and locations across the United States, Hawaii and Washington. The new fuel system automatically measures and records the precise amount of fuel in the tank at the time the customer exits the car rental facility, and repeats the process again when the vehicle is returned. Both readings are printed on the customer's rental receipt when the vehicle is returned so customers can clearly see exactly how much fuel they are being charged for and the amount of such a charge.

A findahirecar.com spokesperson commented; "This technology is long overdue and hopefully it will be rolled out accross the Avis and Budget brands and then will be adopted by their competitors. There is alot of confusion and distrust from consumers regarding fuel charges so a more accurate and transparant system such as this will be very welcomed".

Avis Budget Group have this week announced that it is acquiring Payless Car Rental, the sixth largest car rental company in North America, for $50 million.

Payless was founded in 1971 and over the past 40 years has expanded to 120 rental locations in 20 countries worldwide with annual revenues of $80m.

Avis Budget Group is already the market leader with 29,000 employees and 10,000 branches in 175 countries around the world. Earlier this year it acquired Zipcar, the world's leading car sharing network, with more than 790,000 members in the US and Europe.

Avis Budget will operate Payless as a separate brand from a customer perspective, while realising significant cost savings from lower vehicle depreciation, reduced fleet interest expense and administrative cost synergies.

"Payless expands our global footprint, enables us to support Budget's mid-tier brand positioning, and gives us greater flexibility to capitalize on opportunities in an additional segment of the car rental market in order to help accelerate our growth," said Ronald L. Nelson, Avis Budget Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "At the same time, we expect this transaction to generate an attractive return on our investment."

June 2013 was a record month at car hire comparison website findahirecar.com with 10% more bookings than June 2012.

These are encouraging signs that the economic recession that is affecting Europe and elsewhere is showing signs of abating with business and leisure travel increasing as we enter the tradionally busy summer period in the northern hemisphere.

The most popular destination was the UK with 18 percent of car rental reservations followed closely by Spain and the USA each of which represented 14 percent of bookings. Next in terms of popularity came South Africa with 9 percent of bookings. Ireland made up the top five with 8 percent of cars booked. 

The average rental period for bookings made in June was for 9.2 days, up from 7.4 days in the previous month. This reflects the seasonality of bookings with the trend moving from shorter spring breaks to longer summer holidays. Nearly 60 percent of car rentals booked in June were for a week or less and 21 percent of bookings were for between 7 and 14 days. The number of customers renting a car for more than a two week period increased to 20 percent compared to 12 percent the month before.

The geographical source of bookings on the website were broadly in line with May, the largest market being UK with 20 percent of rentals, up from 19 percent in May. The next biggest market was Australians who's share increased from 11 to 14 percent of all vehicles rented. The number of bookings made by Irish customers fell half to 7 percent of the total as did Canadian's falling to 5 percent. American's make up the top 6 countires with nearly 10 percent of bookings, up from the previous month reflecting the start of the US holiday season.

In terms of gender, 24 percent of bookings were made by women, down slightly from the pervious month when the split was 28/72 men to women.

Cartrawler, the leading car rental technology provider, was been named as one of Ireland’s ‘Best Managed’ companies in the Deloitte Best Managed Companies Awards in Dublin on 1 March.

The Awards recognise successful Irish companies which in regards to innovation, strategy, capability, commitment, financials and management performance across all key functions of the business. Twently companies were recognised at this year's award ceremony.

Speaking in Dublin at the awards, CarTrawler CEO Mike McGearty said: "Everyone at CarTrawler is delighted to have our hard work and perseverance acknowledged with this Deloitte Best Managed Company award. By satisfying consumer demand for choice and convenience across both domestic and international geographies, CarTrawler consistently delivers profitable growth for our partners. Our product attracts a growing network of travel brands that service consumers all over the world, all year round. This makes CarTrawler an important volume driver to car rental suppliers as we bring their product to a vast global audience at an efficient distribution cost. We have firmly established our position as global market leaders in our field. We continue to invest in our team and technology to ensure that we remain the driving force behind car rental ancillary revenue programs worldwide. We have created a robust value cycle for partners, suppliers and consumers alike and as such, are well positioned to continue to deliver sustainable growth.”

A findahirecar.com spokesperson added: "We are delighted that our car rental booking technology provider CarTrawler has been recognised in these prestigious awards. We have built a strong and successful partnership with them over the past four years and we hope this will continue long into the future."

A new law which banned holidaymakers from driving cars in Florida unless they had an international driving permit has been repealed. The U-turn comes after British visitors carrying a UK driving licence suddenly found themselves unable to hire cars in the popular holiday destination, without warning.

The law calling for an International Driving Permit (IDP) was quietly introduced in January without notifying travel companies, meaning they were unable to advise holidaymakers on how to proceed. The first anyone knew of the law was when a British tourist was told he could not hire a car he had pre-booked at a Florida airport as he only had a UK driving licence.

When he called the AA, who provided his travel insurance, they were completely unaware of the new regulations, as was its American counterpart the AAA.

Rosie Sanderson, head of AA International Travel said: “It was an ill-considered piece of legislation that was primarily aimed at holders of foreign language driving licences and it caused considerable confusion within the lucrative fly-drive market in Florida."

Despite being aimed at tourists with licences in foreign languages, the sweeping legislation affected British, Canadian and Australian drivers, meaning many could not hire cars to travel between attractions in a state which has very little public transport. When the problems came to light, the state of Florida quickly said it would not enforce the law. However, holidaymakers were left unsure of their rights and whether their insurance would pay out in the case of an accident.

Ms Sanderson said: “There was yet more confusion when the Florida authorities said that the law would not be enforced, but uncertainty led to some car hire firms demanding an IDP and others not.

“I’m very relieved that this repeal of the law means that it is no longer a compulsory requirement by the State of Florida for UK licence holders to hold an International Driving Permit.”

The IDP lasts for 12 months and holidaymakers can apply for it at their local Post Office for £5.50. Some countries require drivers to have the document, however, in the United States, British holidaymakers have always been able to present their UK licence.

However, Ms Sanderson cautioned: “Car hire companies and insurance companies can still impose their own terms and conditions and I certainly advise that travellers check with their intended car provider prior to travel or obtain the IDP as a precautionary measure."