9698 Car Hire Club?

I was thinking this morning that I rent a car a guaranteed minimum of 3 times a year, for a minimum of a week at a time. I have to go through an arduous process of checking for promos, special offers, price comparison sites, direct deals etc. etc. each time in order to ensure I'm getting a good deal. I have to scour the T's & C's of each prospective hire company to ensure that their sexy headline rate isn't concealing some horrendous exclusions, surcharges etc.

It then occured that there must probably be hundereds of other forum members here who do the same (and many more who just use the provider whom they're comfortable with and who they trust to give them a fair deal most of the time).

I went on to think that we are probably a fairly appealing demographic to a vehicle provider/insurer - mainly :laughs: mature; mainly home owners; presumably experienced in driving in the country of rental; familiar with the roads they'll be driving; using the car for more mundane, everyday purposes than an average holiday rental (where the renter will be hauling about all over the region they travel to, trying to pack in all the sites as they go and ending up scraping the sump across every white road that they get lost on).

I'm wondering whether hire car companies may be open to a well organised user group (like us) approaching them, and offering to put a sizeable annual commitment of days booked their way if we get in return some substantial discount and/or better terms (low/no excess; streamlined booking; free upgrades; cheaper rates for extended rentals etc.)

Finally, I wondered whether such an approach, if made under the auspices of Italy Magazine, may be better received by the big rental companies - and whether IM may be minded to assist with that in return for some kind of commintment from the beneficiaries (us) - i.e. benefits contingent upon remaining active members here (based on post count or something similar).

At this stage I just wanted to float the concept and see whether
a) anyone thinks there's some mileage in it (groan)
b) anyone knows of any similar existing schemes (I don't mean the obvious hertz #1 club etc., I mean unpublicised special interest groups that both parties keep quiet because it offers significant additional value)
c) anyone knows personally of any smaller but reputable hire companies for whom such a proposal may represent a compelling guarantee of volume/repeat business (I'm not sure that we represent enough man days of rental to make Hertz or Avis turn summersaults?)

If there is sufficient interest, we could maybe set up an invite only group later to discuss how we could organise this, what level of benefit would be required/likely and whether to attempt it with/without the Magazine's help - that way, any ideas could be shared in confidence and refined before being floated externally.

Thoughts?

Category

Travel & Holiday Advice

I could probably lay my hands on an old Ape to get you started,Pigro...

I think your gesture Pigro is honourable enough.but for once i will leave my response,at just that....

Good luck....

Is your old Ape a three wheeler or a simian? if the latter I may take you up on it & appoint him to be the commercial director of my fabulous new club :-)

I take it this is me reaping my reward for demanding a bit more levity and interaction beyond the mundane? Touche indeed!

[quote=pigro;90783]Is your old Ape a three wheeler or a simian? if the latter I may take you up on it & appoint him to be the commercial director of my fabulous new club :-)

I take it this is me reaping my reward for demanding a bit more levity and interaction beyond the mundane? Touche indeed![/quote]

We have no markers for your idea,or its possible benefit to an hire firm.

Now if you were to do a poll[you are better at that than me]Along the lines of who flys out and hires a car,who drivers out in there own transport,who lives there full time and can drive but doesn't own a car..ect ect ect. you know what i mean.

You could fathom from the poll the numbers that might on paper atleast take advantage if a hire firm would indeed do a special deal.

I think this sounds like a great idea andI for one would be very interested in trying to get it off the ground.

Jackie

Thanks jackie - of course, I guess most who may stand to benefit would consider it a good idea at least in principle, that's human nature. I'm hoping someone may have an inside track on whether the hire companies may already have such deals and what the volume commitment would have to be in order for it to be of interest to them. For example, Hertz give RA customers pretty decent discounts when booking a car at the same time as a flight but that's hundereds of thousands of people and they're offering maybe a 10% discount off the hertz rack rate (as well as a kickback to RA presumably) ... so it wouldn't be short term volume itself that would interest the big players, more long term commitment and a better risk profile. I honestly have no idea whether this is a complete non starter at this stage, but if you dont ask ...

Sounds like a good idea Pigro. Perhaps as you say, Italymag could do a deal with one of the car hire companies for its registered members. I know it does not affect me, but it is well worth looking into for the future, if the magazine organisers read this post. Good luck if it works.

[quote=giovanni;90784]We have no markers for your idea,or its possible benefit to an hire firm.

You could fathom from the poll the numbers that might on paper atleast take advantage if a hire firm would indeed do a special deal.[/quote]
I'm not going to make a rod for my own back just yet ... would simply like to hear from others their opinion whether it's even worth thinking about (and hoping that someone may know of other such arrangements). If there was sufficient enthusiasm form sufficient people, we could do as you say.

Interesting idea Pigro - will put it forward and see what kind of deal we could arrange.

I think it's an exciting business possibility for a medium sized car rental outfit. My brother does something similar - but in Cape Town so the area he has to cover is limited. We all probably know of local car hire companies which don't extend beyond Lazio/Abruzzo etc. As far as the big names are concerned, they already give discounts through advertisers so if Italy Mag were to advertise Hertz for example, Italy Mag would get a kick back but not necessarily the punters. Worth a try though.

personally I'm not very interested in just getting another "badged" discount via a 3rd party like ItalyMag - there are loads of these around, and all they really do is get you a fair market price at best. I'm more interested in the concept of finding (as you say) a smaller, possibly more local firm, to whom we may be a (relatively) big catch, and getting from them a "real" discount or other similar benefit that isn't going to be achieved by anyone who simply does a joint marketing promo with them to up their one off booking numbers.

I'd like someone at the hire firm to think (say) "300 members @ 5 days average per rental, @ 4 rentals average per member per year = 6000 car days per year we could lock in ongoing if we offer a real incentive". Add the driver risk stuff I mentioned earlier - and also possibly a more even distribution of usage over the year given that we (as home owners) will often travel out of season as well as just July/August - and the question is whether that's any sort of incentive to them.

I think this is an excellent idea Pigro but unfortunately I have no inside track on how to go about it. There must be 100s of Italy mag people out there with holiday homes in italy who rent a car several times a year and who, like you and I, go through the whole search process time and time again checking T and C and so on. Tedious.
In particular I don't understand why car hire firms offer no 'bulk' discount in the sense that renting for 2 weeks costs twice as much as renting for one. I would like to see a discount for committing to a particular supplier for a minimum of so many days a year over so many trips. They would gain loyalty and save admin costs. I have wondered whether smaller, local suppliers might consider this if approached but they are not usually at airports.
I'd be happy to do something active to move this idea along a bit - if i knew where to go next with it. Ideas anyone?
Thinking more laterally, and casting aside the idea that non-residents can't own cars, isn't it a shame that holiday house owners can't group together to share the use of a car.

Would a starting point be to see which airports people use? For instance, could we then approach a small firm a couple of km from Fiumicino/Ciampino?

I think this is a great idea but I suspect the one of the difficulties would be the diversity of airports that people use - this is probably interesting for a small/medium operator but they won't have the coverage needed. Also there woudl be a legal contract involved - who woudl be the parties? As far as the big operators are concerned a lot of corporate clients get much better deals but that is because they are using their own insurance which is not something we could do. I suspect that the only chance is to get a discount from one of the big operators or for the commission paid to the referring site to be repaid somehow.

I disagree with you about less damage to cars though - although not causing any damage we return cars in a pretty messy state as at the moment our house is a building site so the inside is covered in dust, and we go through a ford to take a short cut to Servigliano so the outside is covered in mud!

Regarding reducing the excess - have you tried taking out an annual policy with someone like [url=http://www.insurance4carhire.com]Cheap Car Hire Excess Insurance | Insurance4carhire.com[/url] ? For around £50 you can reduce your excess to zero.

Chris

As Jepsonclough says, a small/medium operator wont cover the whole of Italy as we travel through many different airports. Perhaps approaching operators at the top three airports used by members would enable you to forward your ideas to them.

I suppose I can hazard a guess that two of the top three would be Ciampino and Pescara

9698 Car Hire Club?

P.s.