Car renting is an art, not a skill. People seem to think “yeah I’ve done it before, I can do it again, better.” The truth is that very few car renters truly leverage every trick out there to get the best possible deal. Our goal today is to change that.
Take for instance, upgrades. When you rent a specific car class for pickup on a specific day, in reality unless its a specialty car, you are just renting a car, not the specific car class. Let me explain.
Car Rental Agencies spend a great deal of money studying the human mind and how it works. They want to be able to predict what people will do on any given day so that they may best utilize their investment (cars). One thing has shown in these studies is that people Barcelone Aéroport always looking for a bargain, or a perceived bargain. They have it down to a science. The problem is, not all of their agents are as in tune with the game plan as the computers.
First, some basics. Car rental agents work on commission. Yes, they get a hourly wage, but they supplement it with sales, or more importantly, up-sells, of products that the car agency sells. This metric, or measurement category, is relayed in the form of a number, Dollars per rental day. To break that down, if you were renting a car for 10 days and they up-sold you from a compact car to a full size car for 10 dollars per day, that agent’s “dollars per day” upgrade number would be $10.00. Each agent is required to maintain a specific dollar amount to avoid sanctions and this number is based on historical averages. Law of averages tells us that 1 in 4 renters will say yes to an upgrade request so long as the upgrade rate is “within normal parameters” for the market. This means that if a car rental for a mid size car normally costs around 30 dollars a day, and the car you are currently in is reserved for 25 dollars per day, if the agent offers you an upgrade between 3-7 dollars per day, the average consumer will say yes 25 percent of the time. Car Rental agencies also, through years of research, that if you raise that 3-7 dollar amount up to 7-15 dollars per day, the average consumer will say yes 10 percent of the time. Simple economics. They have a huge wealth of knowledge on how to do this.
From this, car rental agencies will motivate the agent by putting in tiered commission levels that coincide with the data. If an agent has an upgrade rate of 20% and maintains a specific dollar amount, per rental day, the agent’s payout on that sale will be double what it normally would be otherwise. Depending on where the agent is in their sales numbers, they may need to build up their stats to reach a higher payout level. Some agents may go for top dollar to build up their dollar per day average, other agents go for bulk upgrades and dollar amount is of no relevance to them as they need to build up their average upgrades per rental day.