Budget’s High-Tech Pitch for Renting Cars
John A. Wheeler of Ft. Worth often takes off for a weekend in Austin or San Antonio with friends. But he doesn’t like to put mileage on his own new car. Instead, Wheeler rents one from Budget Rent a Car Corp.
But Wheeler doesn’t have to go out to the airport or to a downtown rental office to pick up a car. All he has to do is walk a block from his home to the Ridgemar Mall, where he steps into a 3-by-5-foot booth resembling a bank automated teller machine.
In the booth, he picks up a phone, making contact with a clerk who is able to see him on a TV monitor and who takes a picture of him and his driver’s license. Then he places his credit card into a slot that reads its magnetic strip. If Wheeler passes muster, a rental agreement and a set of keys pop out of the machine, and he can find his car within a few steps.
It all takes five minutes.
Budget hopes the new kiosks will help it crack the biggest potential market of all: the 90% of Americans who have never rented a car.
The auto rental business has grown up around airports, hotels and downtown locations convenient to business travelers. Innovations--shuttle buses, quick check-out systems and linkups with airline frequent flier programs, for example--have tended to cater to this traditional market. Meanwhile, the industry has paid little attention to developing non-business customers.
But Budget’s chairman, Clifton E. Haley, thinks that demographic and lifestyle factors will increasingly make renting a car a popular option. In an interview, he ticked off several factors: “People are retiring earlier. They’re more affluent. They have better pensions. . . . People do not have as many cars as they used to. Insurance (and other) car costs are high. People want to take mini-vacations and they want to get a van.”
All of which, in Haley’s view, adds up to a big opportunity for Budget, the nation’s third-largest auto rental company.
The kiosks--or remote transaction booths, as Budget calls them--are part of a strategy to reach people “where they live, work and play,” Haley said. Budget has already put 38 of the booths in malls and hotels in a number of states, including Florida, California and Texas. It expects to have 80 installed by the end of this year and about 125 by the end of 1992.
The Car Rental Market 1990 market share of car rental companies according to a survey of the top 250 U.S.airports based on revenues reported to airport authorities. Budget: 19.3% National: 15.9% Dollar: 5.5% Other: 5.0% Hertz: 29.3% Avis: 25.1% Does not equal 100% due to rounding Source: Buget Rent a Car
