This summer, the French continued to abandon car rental. These are prices that continue to be prohibitive in a context of widespread inflation. It must be remembered that after the Covid crisis, the shortage of new vehicles among the rental giants, which had liquidated their fleets, had caused prices to skyrocket. And not a little: +35% in 2021 compared to 2019, +48% in 2022 in one year.
And although these prices have fallen by 10% this year, according to Carigami* (332 euros on average per week, that is, +27% more than in 2019), thanks to the replenishment of stocks, reserves have been maintained at an average pole. The comparator thus evokes “an unprecedented drop” of 10% in a year of “low volumes and no peak in summer.”
“Unlike previous years, neither spring nor the eve of the summer holidays have seen any increase in bookings,” says Carigami.
Compared to 2019, the drop is even impressive: -50%! For the comparator, this “drop in demand is linked to a reduction in purchasing power and the impact of other vacation-related expenses: in fact, car rental is very often induced by the prior purchase of ‘a flight or A trip on a train’ .
A downward trend that will continue
However, “the increase in train and plane tickets has discouraged many vacationers, who in the end have not rented a car and have opted for more affordable vacations by private car”, analyzes Pierre Feisthauer, head of development at Carigami. .
As an example of this phenomenon, no Corsican city is on the car rental podium this summer, “for the first time since 2008 (creation of the comparator), since the Island of Beauty is usually the French region that registers the most reservations (after from Paris)”. This year, the first three on this podium are occupied by Paris, Lyon and Nice.
This trend is going to last, according to Carigami: “With prices still high since Covid, the impact of inflation and the scorching summers that are going to last, the consumption habits in the summer period are starting to shake the rent little by little of cars”.
*Carigami is a partner of 6 international rental companies and 7 brokers, it references, evaluates and compares the offers of 40,000 agencies for more than 170 destinations worldwide.
Source: BFM TV
