It’s time for disruption – Next industry ready for disruption
Digitalization, digital technologies and collaborative consumption have already disrupted many different industries. Has the time come for car rental disruption?
Airport car rentals are a big business but the experience is pretty bad all around. Which means it’s time for disruption! Time for the incumbent car rental agencies to get some competition from startups with new ideas, processes, and ways of doing things better!
Hundreds of thousands of travelers leave their cars in long-term parking lots while they’re away on vacation or business. But what if, instead of paying to park in those lots, they were able to get paid while they were out of town? And what if instead of paying high rates to rent a vehicle from one of the incumbent car rental agencies, you could get discounted rentals on someone else’s car while you’re traveling in a different city? That’s the idea behind Flightcar, which seeks to create a marketplace model for airport rentals.
Those renting out a car would simply drop it off at an airport parking lot in the same way that they usually would, and shuttle to the terminal. But when they return, they could be issued a check for the time that their car was rented while away. If it wasn’t rented while they were away, they would simply pay the parking fee instead.
Flightcar not only provides the marketplace for listing and renting autos, but also cleans cars before and after a car is rented and provides necessary insurance and support for drivers while they are renting. It also provides supplemental insurance for all vehicles that have been rented through its system.
Silvercar is providing a more expensive, but more convenient process than incumbent options. Silvercar uses a mobile app to process reservations, pick up and drop off of cars in airport rental lots, and expedite the actual process of renting a vehicle.
Silvercar strips out a lot of the complexity associated with getting a rental, in part because it only has one model of car that it rents out — the Audi A4. There’s no up-sell on car class, and customers will always know what kind of car they’re going to get. Rates will be competitive, but could be slightly more than the cost of full-size vehicles at the incumbents. But what customers pay more for in price is made up for in convenience.
Customers won’t have to worry about getting gouged for gas at 3x the price for bringing a car back with a half-empty tank, for instance: Since cars are connected to the cloud, they’ll merely report back how empty or full the tank is, and automatically charge users for refills based on the market rate for gas. Customers will also have a limited number of insurance options to choose from, rather than having to navigate the confusing choices that more car rental agencies provide.
Which industry will be the next, who is going to be hit by disruption? How to disrupt your industry?
Short URL & Title:
It’s time for disruption – Next industry ready for disruption — http://www.torbenrick.eu/t/r/vku
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