How to run a car rental business?

How to run a car rental business and optimize vehicle and fleet management with the right practices and the right software?

 

Large rental companies and major automotive groups today did not become so in just a few weeks, and they had to adopt the right behaviors to justify a serene and successful growth. Indeed, effectively running a car rental company involves implementing appropriate processes and tools such as the myrentcar car rental software. Let’s explore in this article how to run a vehicle rental business and efficiently develop your rental business.

What is running vehicle rental business?

The activity of vehicle rental business may seem simple, but it actually comprises different offers and numerous services. Indeed, although complementary, these various rental activities are primarily intended for different clients. Firstly, to understand clearly, the management of car rental business varies significantly depending on the rented vehicle: renting a city car, a tourist car, a luxury vehicle, a scooter, a motorcycle, a bicycle, a utility vehicle, or a truck caters to distinct demands. For instance, running a tourist car rental business will mainly focus on short-term seasonal rentals, while a heavy-duty vehicle rental company will primarily target road transport networks.

 

Running a car rental business also varies based on the duration of your rental contracts. Short-term rental and long-term rental (or leasing) are two vastly different offerings. For instance, running a short-term car rental business involves contracts spanning a few days, whereas long-term rentals cover contracts ranging from several months to several years, with or without an option to purchase. Between short and long-term rentals, there’s also a flexible offering lasting a few months only, known as medium-term rental, which is increasingly developing to cope with delays in vehicle deliveries in the new vehicle market.

 

It is crucial to understand the positioning of your offering in the car rental market to ensure effective vehicle rental business. A thrill-seeking vacationer will have different needs from a professional seeking to upgrade their vehicle. Mastering your automotive fleet is thus essential because it determines your relevance and ensures your success. Given that these diverse services cater to varied clienteles and needs, we recommend, especially if you’re starting out, to run car rental business by structuring your offering and avoiding dispersing into a wide range of vehicle categories and rental durations.

How to optimize a car rental business?

There are numerous methods to optimize a car rental business. Firstly, and as mentioned earlier, pay attention to all your customers’ needs and your sector to consolidate the most suitable offer possible. For this purpose, we recommend leveraging the available data, such as the average rental duration, the most rented categories, customer income, or subscription to additional services like insurance or deductibles. All this information will enable you to provide a service that aligns with your clients’ expectations and budget. This is the initial step to optimizing a vehicle rental business within your agency.

 

However, having a relevant car rental offer isn’t everything; it’s also crucial to ensure the profitability of your car fleet. What does a vehicle cost you? What does a car bring in? Ensure that you manage your expenses and revenue to generate profits. This control involves optimizing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of your vehicle fleet. What is TCO in car rental business? The TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) simply represents all expenses and costs associated with the purchase and use of a vehicle. TCO can be easily calculated using dedicated tools integrated into your computer system, which we will discuss further.

 

Running a vehicle rental company also involves digitizing your services to save time and enhance efficiency while improving the customer experience. How? There are numerous software programs and applications that will quickly enable you to manage your online bookings, instantly send contracts with electronic signatures, conduct vehicle inspections on tablets, and automate your invoicing. To top it off, these vehicle rental management apps also provide numerous metrics about your business activity to optimize your car fleet, your offerings, and your profitability. This is why we highly recommend implementing software to manage and optimize car rental business.

How to choose you software to run a car rental business?

Software to run a car rental business is essential for the serene development of both your company and your vehicle fleet. However, given the abundance of options, how do you choose the right software that can structure your services, ensure your profitability, and digitize your business? Fortunately, there’s the online solution called myrentcar, which is widely considered by many rental agencies as the best software for running a vehicle rental business today. Indeed, myrentcar is accessible on both phones and computers in SaaS mode and caters to all your needs, whether it’s managing short-term, long-term, or car-sharing services.

 

The myrentcar application for running a car rental business has all the functionalities to support your long-term development: scheduling management, invoicing, accounting, maintenance tracking, incident reports, and much more! Myrentcar is ideal as software for running a car rental business because it also includes all the tools to digitize and secure your company through the rentpad vehicle inspection app, electronic signatures on your documents, or online bookings. Developed by hitech, experts in high-tech car rental, the myrentcar software has already been adopted by numerous companies such as France Cars, DLM, and Tractafric. This is why we highly recommend using the myrentcar software to run a car rental company.