discount car rental and profitability

Filed in archive Global Economy on August 29, 2003

Since my last post it has been a bit more quite about the emergence of new discount car rentals. A new kid on the block is Geizcars.de. I'm not sure if they are already operational. But the 'regatta' seems to reach the open sea.

Still in the lead Sixti claims in a new article to reach profitability in the end of 2003! Amazing news, but it can't be a fair cost sharing. Sixti just uses the existing infrastructure of Sixt.de. A bit funny is the statement of Lars-Eric Peters that there is an overwhelming demand. Consequently they are about to stock 1000 cars more. First in the elastic pricing model copied from easycar, demand is

always

overwhelming, only the increasing prices regulates this. Second 500 cars all over Germany is really not a big business, isn't it.

Something else that crossed my mind is Maxhopp which provides cars for 1,- EUR a day under certain using restrictions. Maxhopp leases the ad space on it's Smart cars and uses drivers as roaming advertising pillars. Nice idea!