dia1

OK, I'm thoroughly stumped.

Need to rent a car at BCN. Have been using Hertz (#1 Gold member) but they've gone too far downhill to pay their high rates. Planned to switch to National based on some FT posts and pretty good rates I've found.

Read on FT that National and Europcar are a team for rentals in Europe but as I search for rental companies at BCN, I see that (at least in Spain) it's really National/Atesa. That's OK--I used to use Atesa way back when it was really a Spanish company and it was fine.

I try to book online at the National/Atesa site. Good rates appear but I can't get the discounts to book online. I call National and get the discounts. I receive my email confirmation--which says to go to the Alamo desk at BCN. WTH.

I search online to figure out what the relationship is and find this site
http://www.enterpriseholdings.com/
which indicates that Enterprise has recently bought Alamo and National. This website mentions only Europcar as European partner.

So, does anyone know the scoop on this?

And, more importantly, has anyone dealt with National/Atesa in recent weeks? I would much prefer to deal with Atesa in Spain than Alamo!!! (I have had awful experiences with Alamo and won't use them anymore.)

rentalguy

I'll try to clarify for you and hopefully not make it more confusing. National (and Alamo) sold off their European operations about 2 years ago to their European competitor, EUROPCAR. With the exception of a couple places in Europe that were run corporately (namely the UK), in most cases each country that National had a presence in was a franchise operation . For example in Italy, all the National locations were owned by a single franchisee that had the rights to that country. In many cases the same company owned all the locations in that country, in other cases they sold "sub franchises" to some remote areas. Same held true for Spain, Greece, Portugal etc etc. One master franchisee for the country, who owned the rights to operate the brand. There are some exceptions to the rule, but essentially that was the situation.

With the Europcar purchase, they operate both brands seperately and where it doesnt make financial sense, they have eliminated the National location and handle any National bookings through Europcar. It really isnt much different to what is happening with AVIS/BUDGET or National/ Enterprise for that matter. They are run seperately where it is viable otherwise they direct the National booking to Europcar.

Hope this somewhat helps.

kosair

My advice is to STAY AWAY from National Atesa in Barcelona if you are an American. My reservation, even though I had it printed off, was not honored there last year, though they were able to give me a car for 100 Euros more for the week. I am a National Executive Elite with over 70 rentals a year.

They told me at the desk that they were a "partner with National" and that they didn't care what I had booked with National, my reservation was worthless.

dia1

Thanks for the alert.
I was worried about this since it's not prepaid (though that's not really a rate guarantee anymore, either) and also worried about on the road support outside of Spain in case of a problem with the car.

To be fair to "National Atesa" (as they're interestingly listed on the airport website), I've had the problem that you describe with them at BCN with Hertz at MAN where the desk clerk declared that they were not the same as Hertz in the US and didn't have the same policies.

I'm just really hating this new rental car world we're in with all the consolidation and ensuing taking-advantage-of-customers. I wish some "Southwest" car rental company would come into the picture. Both DH and I have changed to skip car rental whenever possible where before we were both in the mode of renting whenever parking was not going to be a huge issue.