He thinks the luxury car-rental market should model other parts of the travel industry.
The self-drive car-rental business is in its infancy, although optimists believe this will change.
Monty bristled when I made a bad joke about Ford becoming a car-rental replacement for bloggers.
But how successful will airlines be at also taking hotel and car-rental bookings?
The deal would leave only two large-cap car-rental companies trading in the public markets: Hertz, based in Park Ridge, N.
As a result, they are able to deliver services at much cheaper prices than traditional car-rental companies, hotels, universities and encyclopedias.
Airlines, hotels, and car-rental companies could offer price comparisons on their own sites, a model successfully adopted by US insurance companies.
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Sales of highly profitable pickup trucks are tightly correlated with housing starts, while buoyant business travel boosts demand from car-rental firms.
Commercial airlines and car-rental firms are suffering, but executive-jet firms are booming.
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It is hard to imagine hotels and car-rental firms being successful at trying to sell flights, so their websites will probably remain specialised.
Car-rental companies, for example, will be able to use mobile devices to inform their clients of their rental status, service requirements, lease extensions and other vital information in real time.
In a tacit admission of defeat, the company is divesting its used-car and rental-car operations.
Faced with the sensible course -- say, opening a car rental franchise -- or facing his fears and opening his lungs before a crowd of important personages, Brennan proves that there is still hope.
He was ugly, a nondescript wastebasket-on-wheels that would have fit right in at a dingy rental-car agency.
Yes, the company's North American market share is down, but that was deliberate--Ford's CEO decided not to aggressively pursue virtually profitless sales to the rental-car and government-fleet vehicle markets.
It has just built a 2-terabyte (2, 000-gigabyte) warehouse of airline bookings that will grow to 4 terabytes when hotel and rental-car bookings are added.
Analysts also note that Hertz is expanding its off-airport car rental locations, which are more profitable and less sensitive to the cyclical travel economy.
In fact, ZoomCar could, if it grows fast enough and markets cleverly enough, carve an impressive slice of the self-serve car rental space in a country where 300 million live in metropolitan regions.
"Moving forward, we will continue to give to give customers choice among a robust selection of car rental options -- including Hertz, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Thrifty, Advantage and other leading suppliers -- that will fully meet travelers' needs, " the company said in a statement.
According to the report, 7 Days has grown its bookings an average of 140% every year since 2006, monitors customer satisfaction, offers a loyalty program like US and European chains, and does the social networking thing. 7 Days uses its customer base and online booking platform to cross-sell airline tickets and car rental serives, so it benefits from a one-stop shopping convenience.
At the same time, it intends to eliminate 70, 000 low-margin rental car sales, which should help profits.
There are at least three things that make the rental-car business great for customers but utterly detestable for investors.
Even so, the Taurus managed to retain a loyal following, despite being relegated to rental-car status in recent years.
Funded by a consortium of hotels, airlines and rental-car companies, it was meant to be a comprehensive travel-reservation system.
Private equity has shuffled all the mattress and rental-car companies it can.
Enterprise does a special insurance check to make sure a customer's policy transfers over, though in some cases credit cards also provide rental-car insurance.
Matt Davis of Fiat USA says the rental-car deal, branded as ePass, grew out of brainstorming sessions where company officials debated how to deal with the car's 87-mile range.
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But after you've set things up, the site will continuously fetch the latest points balances, expiration dates and reward opportunities from all your flight, hotel, car rental and credit-card programs.
So instead of trying to hide the fact that Avis was the also-ran rental car agency, the ad men asked: why not turn its No. 2 position into an asset?
Even perennially deficient models like the Chrysler 200 (formerly the Sebring) and Dodge Avenger have been inching their way up from the rental-car-grade abyss with freshly cast interiors and much-improved V6 powertrains.
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