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Old Jan 22, 2017, 7:24 pm
  #6  
AutoSlash
Company Representative - AutoSlash and HotelSlash
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: autoslash.com | hotelslash.com
Posts: 5,665
So I plugged in your DTW from 1/28 (noon) to 2/4 (noon) search into our system. Here are the lowest rate I got for each of the major companies using standard discount codes:

Dollar - $182
Thrifty - $189
Enterprise - $189
Alamo - $194
Avis - $196
Hertz - $197
National - $359

So yes, National in DTW (at least for these dates) is WAY more expensive than any other company.

I wanted to see if DTW was an anomaly so I ran a few other cities. Here's ORD for the same dates:

Budget - $248
Avis - $254
Hertz - $262
Alamo - $264
Dollar/Thrifty - $325
Enterprise - $403
National - $430 (also the highest of all the companies)

LAX, MIA, BOS and CLE were all similarly high. Then I ran JFK. National was $599.64 undiscounted, which was again the highest of all of the major companies. However after applying the standard Emerald Club Discount (5007125) and a $30 off coupon from their website, the price came down to $269 which was right in line with the discounted rates for other companies and less than half the rack rate. I've seen many other situations where National was priced very competitively with the other majors.

Bottom line, it depends on the situation/location but based on testing multiple locations for this particular week, National appears to be priced way higher than average. My guess is that EHI feels they have a premium product and people are willing to pay for it. They certainly have been spending a lot on advertising lately, so whatever they're doing, it must be working.

Last edited by AutoSlash; Jan 22, 2017 at 7:36 pm
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