It is entirely possible that the Thrifty yield management department has decided to pursue a new strategy of holding the rates high and letting cars sit instead of lowering rates to raise the number of bookings. Maybe they want to test the waters and see if it results in higher profits.
I haven't heard anything official or in writing, but then again, I'm not privy to those details.
If this is a new directive from upper management, would that count as a conspiracy?
I mentioned conspiracy because several of the original posts in this thread mentioned that it is happening all over and at multiple companies, and if people are demanding the answer to that, then the only possible answer I could think of is that it's a conspiracy among the RAC boards of directors or something. If it's just Thrifty at PDX or a few Thriftys, then I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy but rather just a simple policy decision or test.
Thrifty PDX was until recently a franchise. It was (within the last 2-3 years) bought by DTG corporate and is now a corporate store, so their rates and policies are managed by the corporate guys in Tulsa. So I'm not sure how localized this type of thing is.
My personal thoughts IF this turns out to be the case: I'm not sure it's a corporate directive. DTG president Gary Paxton specifically said once at a shareholder meeting that Dollar and Thrifty target the value market. They don't have the "full-service"* and business traveler/corporate account features and status programs that some of the "premium" brands (mostly Avis, National, and Hertz) have, instead targeting the leisure traveler (who is price sensitive). Paxton's rationale for this is that leisure travelers, on average, rent the cars for longer periods of time (5-7 days or more instead of 2-4 days). This helps keep staffing costs down, since the ratio of rental transactions to revenue rental days is lower--in other words, to achieve X revenue or X percentage of utilization, it can be done with fewer transactions, which allows a reduction in counter staffing, vehicle detailing staffing, lot attendant staffing, etc.
However, because DTG targets the leisure market, if they don't price lower than their competitors, they don't receive bookings. People aren't loyal to Dollar or Thrifty like they are to Hertz--I've only had a fairly small number of people tell me that they "only rent from Thrifty" (and even fewer that "only rent from Dollar"). I hear many more people tell me they "always rent from Hertz/National/Avis." The brand loyalty is less, so DTG relies on pricing.
So, I think this higher rate strategy is going to backfire on them. They'll be sitting on a bunch of cars and making $45 per day on 50% of them instead of $30/day on 90% of them. The math comes out better on the latter--unless they downsize their fleet so that 50% turns into 90% utilization. (That is happening at some locations.)
*I'm not entirely sure what, to the average leisure traveler, the "premium" brands offer over Dollar and Thrifty. The cars are typically just as new (in my experience) and rental policies are typically about the same. About the only difference I've really seen in the eyes of the general public is that, on average, the "premium" ones are more tolerant of damage to the vehicles and are less likely to pursue collecting on damage (which, if the company has to eat the cost of damage, is really bad business--losing money over damages could be enough to be the difference between a profit and a loss), but especially when you're dealing with franchises, the attitudes and policies vary more between the franchises and locations than the brands.