m907

I've been to a few National airport locations over the last month. Morale among staff seems low. A person at a major airport location said half the staff had been laid off. Cars on the aisle were visibly dirty inside and out. At another location they had Enterprise staff covering National, Alamo, and Enterprise. I've always known EHI to be a company that treats its employees well, but it makes me wonder about that and the health of the company.

What are you seeing?

iluvdoco

Haven't rented recently but a couple neighborhood Enterprise locations near me closed down. With margins as slim as they are, wouldn't surprise me that they've had to lay off staff. I hope they survive; have had nothing but wonderful experiences with National, plus I hope to redeem my free days.

Ironically, the rental pricing is still expensive.

m907

That's what's most irritating. It's definitely lower than usual (except maybe NYC) but still above what the others are charging. I've heard speculation that hotels are still pricey because they're guessing the only people traveling right now are on essential business travel. National may be using the same tactic.

Tony King

Morale seems good at LAS. Lot was completely full. Surprisingly the executive selection area still didn't have anything more appealing to offer than the mix of altima's, Malibu's, fusion's, etc. I've seen some location putting luxury vehicles on the aisle right now since they're not being rented.

My problem was pricing as well. I was ready to set up a year long rental. Sixt offered me a MB CLA-250 or similar for $473.25 per month for 12 months ($5679). National was $20000 something for a year. The Sixt price includes all taxes and fees. Checked with branch and area manager who checked with VP over Nevada group and National wasn't able to match or even come close to that price. So I'm pretty much at Sixt for the next year. Checked with some EHI managers in CA and UT region and didn't get a response.

Sixt LAS said they laid off 80% of staff, sold 300 vehicles, parked another 500 in a rented lot and still don't have room. Another issue is these rental companies already had orders in for new cars from the manufacturers. They're getting deliveries of those right now which compounds the problem. Since those orders are often placed months ahead of time, and the manufacturers need a place to move the cars too, it's not easy to defer delivery.

A National manager told me they're moving alot of new cars into storage and will just defer alot of orders in the 2nd half of 2020 until things normalize.

bocastephen

How did you get that pricing from Sixt? Do you have an account manager?

kxc262

Sixt has some very big discounted rates right now, especially on monthly rates. Range Rover/X5/Escalade (XFAR?) is running around $19/day before taxes for me at SJC. 90 day minimum.

m907

I talked to someone in the company who said EHI rentals are down 80% nationally and up to 97% down at some locations, including airports. They furloughed a ton of people at all locations and were paying them up to two weeks but that's expiring soon for most of them.

bocastephen

Just found it online - not sure if there any coupons or discounts to bring it down further, but given I'm at $140 a week with National all-in, it's almost a wash cost-wise, although Sixt would give me a much nicer car albeit with a mileage cap.

storewanderer

I am in Reno, NV and the local airport that saw 8,000 passengers a day last year now sees 650 passengers a day.

The casinos and ski resorts are all closed up tight.

The rental car agencies have cars parked all over the perimeter of the airport on dirt lots; thousands of cars.

Enterprise has a number of locations around town; they've closed all of the locations around town (a couple are in casinos, but most are strip malls), but the airport location and a second location about a half mile from the airport (used to be the airport location, before Enterprise got a space inside the actual airport). As many car dealers/auto body shops are nearby, that Enterprise does a pretty heavy business on insurance rentals. Those two locations that are still open, are running on reduced hours.

So I would say, how would the health of any business be, when the foot traffic of your main customer source (air passengers) falls by 90%?

Probably not so good...

Some folks are trying hard to get businesses reopened up here in Reno but I really don't think it is going to happen. Given the number of cases every day keeps rising, sort of tough to justify reopening even if there "aren't that many cases here." We closed the economy and once that decision was made we need to follow through with it and hope it stops the spread of this virus. I was critical at the time they closed the economy but accepted the decision, and now, the worst thing you could do now is re-open it too soon.

m907

I think we are going to look back on this and regret it. Many businesses will simply never reopen. Epidemiologists are directing our public policy right now. It's easy to say "shut it down" when you make mid-six figures working behind a desk in a stable industry.

Tony King

No, I just booked on the Sixt website. They have monthly rentals starting at $289 for the lowest class, and progressively increase as you get higher class vehicles.

iluvdoco

That pricing from Sixt is fantastic, and they offer vehicle delivery within 10 miles? Wish I had a closer Sixt location.

m907

Anecdotally, there's been an uptick in business at the locations I've been to. The lots seem only half-full, I'm guessing because business is up but they're not willing to bring cars out of storage yet.

bocastephen

I wouldn't assume car counts from the lot are an indication of bookings - they could be trucking a huge number of cars away for long term storage to clear out some of the over crowded locations.

I guess with Hertz's situation, the decision to store cars vs rent them cheap like Sixt turned out to the wrong one. It was obviously better to get $12/day for cars than $0/day - so now let's wait and see what happens to EHI.

Hot Pocket

Florida is open for business and busy, National at SRQ had virtually no vehicles left when I picked up on Friday morning. The staff was exasperated after having laid 75% of their people off the previous week. The station manager had indicated that demand skyrocketed last week.