With reduced fleets and delays in the acquisition of new vehicles, the Brazilian rental market is currently facing shortages in available rental vehicles, accoding to Rentcars.com.

The previous months brought some life back to tourism in Brazil, which had been down since April due to the current global pandemic. Corroborating the fact that rental vehicles have been the go-to option throughout this pandemic, Rentcars.com witnessed market demand rise by 347%.

However, despite the numbers, potential growth has been stunted due to the atypical scenario: a lack of available rental vehicles.

“In order to maintain their financial standing, many car rental companies had reduced their fleet, aiming to revamp their total fleet size once demand picked up again," Vivian Almeida, commercial director for Rentcars.com, said in a statement. "Unfortunately though, while market demand has returned, fleet increases have not followed at the same pace. The Brazilian government took certain steps in order to upkeep the country’s levels of employment and manufacturers joined in so as to reduce expenditures during the pandemic as well. But, now that rentals have picked up again, their delivery of new vehicles to supplement the country’s available fleet has been laggard in comparison to what it was during pre-COVID months.”

According to the Brazilian Association of Car Rental Companies (Associação Brasileira de Locadoras de Automóveis), the current estimate for delivery of new fleets is ranging between 90 to 180 days — having been 30 days in previous years.

“We’ve been raising a flag on the need to anticipate booking volumes in order to ensure fleet availability for some time now," Almeida said. "On previous brazilian holidays this year, many destinations were left with no available vehicles to meet customer needs — on average, 25% of destinations had no available fleet."

The coming months will most likely present a similar scenario as well as bring with it an increase in the average daily rate.