These days, you can use your phone to whistle up a car—with or without a driver—so who wants to spend a half hour waiting at the car rental office? No one, and the car rental companies are scrambling to deal with that.
Avis, for instance, has ramped up its app and 50,000 of its cars to be “fully connected,” with 50,000 more scheduled by next year. “Fully connected” means that Avis can electronically ‘see’ how much gas is left and more to expedite check-in. Its app also allows using your phone as a remote to unlock the car doors, making for fast check-out. If you forget where you parked it, by the way, you can use your phone to flash the lights.
Enterprise, which also owns National and Alamo, is sending tablet-equipped agents out from behind the counter. With your reservation on the screen, the agent takes customers to their cars and gets their signature on the screen. Any necessary receipts are e-mailed.
Another approach, long-used by National, and now showing up at Hertz, is to check customers in, and then let them take any car on the lot or a designated zone; the choice gets recorded at the checkout booth on the way out of the lot.
Rental companies are taking positions on the other side of the fence, too, by joining in the car-sharing market. Avis is the owner of Zipcar, the industry leader, and Enterprise has its own car-sharing division.
