By Leonard Robinson
If you can find a rental car, the odds are that prices will be upward of $300 per day.
After a year of being trapped indoors, spring break travelers are plotting their return to air travel and beaches. This has proven to be a disaster for rental car companies. Many face a depleted fleet and supply chain issues with obtaining new vehicles, unable to keep up with the rising demand. The demand has led to a boom for Turo, an Airbnb for car rentals.
Touro, founded in 2010 as a peer-to-peer car-sharing platform, has seen dramatic growth, including a 7% increase in revenues, throughout the coronavirus pandemic as car owners often rent their car because it is not in use due to job loss or working from home.
“Often times it does start with the car you already have or second car that you’re not using very frequently,” said Turo CEO and founder Andre Haddad to CNN Business.
Customers are attracted to the company’s wide selection of vehicles, including luxury vehicles, such as Tesla and Porsche, which are often not available in the traditional rental car fleet, explained Haddad.
Turo’s business model insulates the company from issues faced by traditional companies, such as a depleted supply of vehicles unable to meet customer demand.
“That’s the problem with the heavy asset model. We don’t have that problem. We’re an asset-light business,” Haddad added. “In many ways, the pandemic has shown the advantage of the flexibility of our model.”
Hertz, popular among business travelers, filed for bankruptcy in August as a means to protect themselves from creditors, struggling from drops in demand and fluctuations in the used car market throughout the pandemic. After the filing, the company focused on selling off large chunks of their fleet and increasing the sale of their stock, later earning a rebuke from the SEC.
