The apocalypse of car rental begins!

Los Angeles, The United States, 2022-Mar-03 — /EPR Network/ — Do you remember the good old days before the COVID-19 pandemic, when you could plan a trip anywhere and not think about renting a car beforehand? Do you remember how you came to the rental desk at the airport and took an available car? Do you remember how you were looking through hot offers in the hope of finding a good car and paying for it at the very last moment while getting on the plane? These days are gone.

Welcome to the reality of 2022! Everything has changed here. Today, renting an average car in the traditional US rental cars market can cost up to $700 per day since the US travel market has gone through the pandemic. But the situation with rental cars is not the same.

Alexander Pershikov, the founder of an international car rental marketplace, talks about those changes in the market in 2021.

– The lowest price a customer could find for a weekend trip to Arizona was $700 per day. At the same time, the rental price of Porsche Panamera in Dubai dropped from $700 to $400, and the price for a new Lamborghini Huracan dropped from $1500 to $800 per day, – he says.

Even the big market’ players Rentalcars and AutoSlash can’t make miracles today. The United States is experiencing a severe shortage of rental cars because of the pandemic that has hit the world.

Everything started with the outbreak of the Covid epidemic a year ago, and rental companies were forced to go into survival mode and sold as many cars as they could. On top of that, the big companies like Hertz (which also owns Dollar and Thrifty) and Advantage Rent A Car filed for bankruptcy in 2020, and Europcar ended up restructuring.

Car sharing saves the market! 

Today the only alternative to traditional car rentals is car sharing. Maybe this is the exact thing that will save your trip, and you will find a car at the best price. It is important to understand that in the car-sharing sector, the supply reflects demand. And today the demand is way higher than the supply.

How did it start?

Until the end of 2020, there was no problem since the world was on lockdown. The demand for car rental was very low, so the car rental companies kept their car fleet at a very low level. But with a record number of vaccinated people and travel recovery, the industry was unable to meet demand in 2021. All this made things hard for travelers because of high prices and lack of inventory. In addition to the factors of recovery, a huge impact of funds into the world economy stimulates and will keep stimulating the travel demand.

For example, one weekend, all private cars in Tampa, Orlando, and Denver were sold out. That means if you don’t book a car in advance, you will not probably have a chance to get it when you want.

Everything got worse!

It has become a random phenomenon and now it is turning into a seasonal trend. There are a few factors making everything complicated. The Americans do love traveling by cars; they drive instead of flying, and rent cars instead of taxis and Uber. As a result, the demand for cars is so high. Another thing that causes demand is that people can’t travel abroad right now, so they choose local travel destinations. It also impacts the demand.

Now the market is facing another challenge: it is expensive for car rental companies to expand their car fleet today due to the lack of semiconductors in the factories. It causes delays in the production of new cars. Car manufacturers used to sell cars to rental companies up to 40% lower prices. But they don’t do it today because they can sell them without a discount.

How is travelling going to be?

What does a traveler have to do? My advice is to book a car as early as possible. Maybe, it is the availability of affordable transport that will determine your travel destination in 2022. Since international air traffic is open now, you won’t have any problems with flight tickets or hotel bookings. But you need to be ready to face the lack of cars at good prices for road trips.

The situation in Europe

Today, the United States has already faced a lack of cars for rent. Europe has faced it as well. The current volume of tourists did not reveal any difficulties in the collapsed infrastructure of the tourism business. As soon as the developed countries open the borders, the tourist flow will increase and reveal difficulties in the operation of the tourism market, especially in the countries where the lockdown was long and had significant damage to small and medium businesses.