Survey Shows Strong Car Rental Rates through Summer

Average rate quotes at six major locations in April increased in the second and third weeks but fell back below $40 in the fourth week.

by Staff

May 7, 2012

Survey Shows Strong Car Rental Rates through Summer — Rate data provided by Rate-Highway, a provider of revenue management services for the auto rental industry. Rates are an average of aggregator/OTA rates for all vendors present in the markets listed on the date of the survey.

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With the help of Michael Meyer of Rate-Highway Inc. and Jim Tennant of The Tennant Group, Auto Rental News publishes monthly auto rental rate surveys for six major cities: Boston, Miami, Chicago, Houston, Seattle and Los Angeles. The rates are based on weekly surveys.

Analysis and commentary provided by Jim Tennant of The Tennant Group. This survey is dated May 7. (Click on the charts and graphs for a larger view.)

Rate data provided by Rate-Highway, a provider of revenue management services for the auto rental industry. Rates are an average of aggregator/OTA rates for all vendors present in the markets listed on the date of the survey.

The 6 City Average rate quotes in April increased in the second and third weeks but fell back below $40 in the fourth week. The monthly average ended up $3.49 below March.

City managers in Houston and Chicago must be smiling; both cities’ quotes are significantly higher than a year ago. At that time those rates were pretty much in line with other cities, but today they are about double those of the four other cities. Houston’s average quote in the second week of April was $91.51 per day (for an ICAR) — except for two weeks during Christmas in Miami, which is the highest we have seen since we started this survey a year ago.

In spite of the fallback in April, rates should be significantly stronger over the summer than a year ago.

For a car rental rate survey on Western Europe click here, or for last month's U.S. car rental rate survey, click here.