Who needs GPS? Avis is now offering ultimate navigation unit: A chauffeur
Professional drivers offered in 20 U.S. cities
Dan Luzadder, Travel Weekly, 2/11/2008 (excerpted)
In the commodity-prone car rental business, companies continually strive to differentiate themselves. Hertz was the first to offer GPS navigation systems, for example, and now they're premium fare among all the majors.
But it is Avis that may have come up with the ultimate navigation add-on: a professional, locally based driver. A living, breathing human being. A chauffeur.
When Avis rolled the dice six months ago on its Avis Chauffeur Drive service, it was testing the potential for a niche market, with only a slight notion of how big that market might be.
But the gamble is apparently paying off. Chauffeur-driven car rentals have gained traction with busy executives around the country and even with some leisure travelers.
Avis Chauffeur, in a partnership with WeDriveU -- a private, national, chauffeur-for-hire service -- was launched in 10 cities with little fanfare last June. Avis customers can arrange for driver services in three-hour time blocks for under $40 an hour on top of the car rental cost.
The venture has now expanded to 20 cities with 400 locations, and more growth is on the horizon, executives from both companies told Travel Weekly.
"Most people give you a car with four wheels and a steering wheel," said Mike Caron, vice president of product development at Avis Budget Group. "But customers also value their time. We want to continue to put service into the mix, whether it is the E-ZPass [toll tags] or disability service products or this new chauffeur product."
Chauffeur service is more common in Europe and elsewhere in the world, but the market never developed in the U.S. using rental company cars. Caron described a business traveler from India who recently used Avis Chauffeur to travel up the East Coast. He had been accustomed to chauffeur-drive at home "but hadn't expected to find it in the U.S."
Dump the driver where you like
The chauffeurs, locals who work in each city on contract with WeDriveU, are trained and licensed and are subject to extensive background screening. The chauffeurs can pick up a car for a customer and later return it to an Avis location, but customers who want to keep the car can drop off the chauffeur wherever they like.
Dennis Carlson, a former accountant with Arthur Andersen, started the chauffeur service 20 years ago with locations in New York and Los Angeles. He said local drivers offer community knowledge and experience with local traffic and destinations plus a chauffeur-like attitude.
"They aren't paid to talk," he quipped.
But he said their knowledge made point-to-point trips in unfamiliar cities more efficient for busy executives. The chauffeur service also eliminates time-consuming searches for parking and enables executives to get more done -- completing paperwork, making calls, conducting business -- and still have the convenience of after-hours transportation when needed, he said.
Sites set beyond U.S.
He said he had tried to attract interest among car rental companies for the past 10 years, but until the Avis agreement, he had not been able to offer service in enough locations.
Carlson said he had begun to explore again the idea of chauffeur-driven rental cars when he discovered that Avis was looking for a vendor for such a service.
Since the two companies struck their deal, however, growth has been rapid, especially as the chauffeur-drive service gets wider notice from visitors to Avis' supplier site, from advertising and from the media. More service locations are on the drawing board.
"We are in 20 markets, and additional expansion is coming," Carlson said. "With the cities we are in, we already cover at least half of Avis' customers today. So the question is: What is the next tier market in the U.S.? After that, it is Canada and Mexico. We will probably be in Canada at the end of this year. Mexico will take a little longer. We may look at expanding into secondary markets like Austin, San Antonio, or Albuquerque."
He said the service was also being marketed for major events: "We're opening April 1 in Denver. The Democratic National Convention is coming there this year, and we expect a lot of demand for chauffeur service then."
Users are billed separately by WeDriveU for the chauffeur portion of the car rental. At less than $40 an hour for a driver, it is cheaper than car service, Caron noted. It is also low-tech, since the reservations and assignments are made by phone.