February Continues Strong Rate Trend

February, 2013 continued the trend of the previous three months, with a 6-city average rate quote $5.32 higher than a year ago.

by Staff

March 4, 2013

2 min to read

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 airports in the cities of Boston (BOS), Miami (MIA), Chicago (ORD), Houston (HOU), Seattle (SEA) and Los Angeles (LAX). The rates are based on weekly surveys and are published monthly.

Analysis and commentary provided by Jim Tennant of The Tennant Group. This survey is dated Feb. 4. There will also be a session on rates and rate management at the next Car Rental Show, April 15-16, 2013 at the Rio in Las Vegas.

February, 2013 continued the trend of the previous three months, with a 6-city average rate quote $5.32 higher than a year ago. The year-over-year increase was smaller than January, but it was pulled down by the $14 decrease in Houston. Houston’s rates for February through May, 2012 were extraordinarily high and are now back to more normal levels. The other five cities’ year-over-year increase averaged more than $9 – a very respectable increase indeed.

Boston and Los Angeles were the two lowest average quotes, but their increases were both double digit and the highest of the six cities. Chicago continues to have the highest quotes.

For an Auto Focus blog on a pricing analysis based on the public companies' full-year and fourth quarter conference calls, click here.

Year-to-Year Comparisons

	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb
BOS	(5.12)	(8.65)	(16.74)	(0.21)	1.14	1.52	10.11	24.44	12.32	10.52
MIA	(12.15)	(25.58)	(24.27)	(11.98)	(6.02)	(9.79)	(7.28)	11.67	5.74	8.24
ORD	15.22	0.11	(2.86)	22.96	6.24	10.64	28.72	37.24	12.14	6.81
HOU	18.34	(4.75)	(5.01)	(6.54)	(9.46)	(4.50)	(2.88)	2.88	-2.76	(14.00)
SEA	(16.17)	(20.34)	(23.25)	(22.59)	(2.29)	0.53	7.10	19.31	4.90	8.65
LAX	(11.44)	(14.32)	1.90	(7.87)	(5.50)	(7.91)	4.11	9.64	5.29	11.73
6-City Avge*	(1.89)	(12.25)	(11.71)	(4.37)	(2.65)	(1.58)	6.65	17.53	6.27	5.32

*This is the total 6-city average compared year-over-year, not the average difference of each month.

These tables and graph show the average of all base rate quotes per day for an ICAR at the six airports shown for arrivals 15 to 21 days ahead of the date of the survey, for two- and seven-day rentals. If the arrival date is a Friday or Saturday, the two-day rate will be a weekend rate, otherwise it will be a regular rate.

Topics:Airport Rentals 6-City Survey Rental Rates Tennant Group Rate-Highway Rental Operations