MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - Independent car rental operators with smaller fleets will now be able to grab a slice of the 8 million car rental bookings processed annually by the world's largest online car rental service.
In a first for the industry, Rentalcars.com, has launched a new web service - Marketplace - enabling smaller car rental businesses to feature in over 95 million global customer search results every year.
The Marketplace system was designed so that operators can maximise fleet utilisation and profitability; it offers them full control of fleet, rates, discounts and extras.
One of the first businesses to sign-up, Monjur Khan, Manager at Hummingbird Motors, said "Until now we've been unable to connect with brokers. Marketplace is easy to use and I'm able to keep more cars moving, more of the time. I now have reservations from customers that I simply could not get before I joined."
Initially launched in the UK, Marketplace is now also available in Ireland, the Netherlands and Cyprus. Rentalcars.com have plans to roll out to 20 countries within the next 12 months, increasing the number of locations and vehicles available to customers.
The company plans to carefully manage the supply partners joining the service to ensure high quality customer service levels for customers match supply and demand.
While customers searching for car hire at airports and travel hubs are already well served, James Adams, Director of Product & Commercial at Rentalcars.com explains the rationale for Marketplace: "Aside from airport and travel hub hire, we also see millions of searches for other locations - such as city centre and out of town locations - where, historically, we've had little or no coverage through our current partnerships. Marketplace will allow us to match customer demand with operator supply, which we believe will have the twin benefit of growing the rental market while serving the needs of our customers."
Tags: RENTALCARS.COM
