Car Hire USA Airports to Centralise Facilities
The wave of airports in the US building centralised rental car centres continues to grow. For the past decade airlines across the United States have merged car hire zones into a single facility. Instead of individual car hire USA companies are running seperate buses to and from the airport and each hire company having its own car parking areas. Busing is shared, car rental counters and cars are side-by-side and valuable space around airports is freed up. Still to take up the schene is the worlds biggest car hire market – Orlando.
Commenters were quick to voice their opinion
This is more efficient; but each car hire company loses its competitive advantage. No more dropping you off at the actual rental car. Why not just have one agency then – or better yet, the airport have its own hire car system?
Now if only the rental car companies would update their computers to give correct driving directions to and from the new facility….
As an Atlantan, I rented a car from National to pick up at the Atlanta airport, drive to a meeting in extreme south Georgia, and drop off at 5 AM the next morning at the Tallahassee airport for a flight to St. Louis and then back to Atlanta. National’s computer reservation system directed me to drive to their new airport rental facility, where no private vehicles may park. I parked in the street, went inside, was directed to park in the airport terminal decks and take a shuttle bus back (train was not yet running). All that threw me an hour off schedule so I arrived late at my lunch meeting almost to the Florida border.
All the rental car companies need to update their directions to customers, whether arriving at this facility by air or by car.
I think the consolidated facilities are great because they reduce the number of shuttle busses and should reduce rental car company costs. Unfortunately, they rarely reduce the costs paid by consumers. Additionally, they add to the industry’s deceptive pricing practices because they quote a low rate, then later add in “consolidated facility” and shuttle charges” (which were covered under under their quoted price when they provided the service).
Cleveland and San Francisco both opened consolidated rental car facilities in 1998 and since then they have opened in many other major airports in the USA .
More are planned, such as pooled car hire Orlando, rental firms in Miami, San Jose, Memphis and deeper south in New Orleans.
Though emissions from one car are nothing compared with those from even the best airplane, they add up. So instead of renting a car to get around the city you’re visiting, try researching public-transit options. Public transit is often cheaper and faster, offers a great way to sightsee, and is almost always more earth-friendly
Tags: airport car hire, Car Hire, orlando, usa
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Car Hire, car rental. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
