FT needs a General car rental subforum
 

Flyertalk needs a general Car Rental forum, that is non-specific to any one particular rental car agency. Currently, there are eight (8) car rental sub forums, none of which are general, and all of which are only on topic when discussing the specific rental agencies listed in their titles. As such, any general car rental strategy question that would apply to any or all of the agencies, would effectively have to be reposted under all eight of the forums individually.

This makes even less sense in 2015, because of the rental car company consolidation that has created an oligopoly that has significantly changed the industry over the last two years, namely, as evidenced by the dramatic increase of rental car prices, due to decreased competition and price collusion between brands underneath one umbrella.

Therefore, despite there being 8 sub forums for 8 separate car agencies (the last one naming two agencies as examples, but is intended to be a catchall for others) there are really only 3 major rental car companies operating the 9 well known car rental brands. One WSJ article compared this consolidation to the railroad industry... once all the railroad companies became consolidated under one or two brands, like Burlington Northern... the prices of rail freight rose, and there was no competition.

People who fly generally need ground transportation at their destination, and rental cars are a huge factor in the travel costs. Now they are even bigger, and we need a forum to help us discuss how to mitigate against this development, and ferret out the increasingly more difficult to find deals across all of the "shell" brands operating as "separate" business units in name, but not genuinely competing.

For the last five flights I've booked for domestic travel in the US, with all trips being 4 days or less, the rental car costs exceeded the air fare. And these are all WEEKEND rental rates.

What is even stranger, is that in every case, the redeemable miles earned from the rental cars were greater than the redeemable miles earned from the flights to get there and back. And some of the flights were transcontinental coast to coast. Since the value of RDMS can enter into the strategy of total dollar cost value of the rental car, the selection of one rental car co branded mileage "bonus" over another can materially factor into which car to rent, beyond the contract price alone.

I had several questions to put to more experienced travelers to solicit help in sorting through the choices this paradigm shift in car rental companies and costs presents, but alas, there is no forum under which I can appropriately ask any question pertaining to car rentals that would apply to any and all car rental companies.

Since car rental costs now exceed flight costs, I need to pay more attention to strategizing on the best way to rent cars. If there is another forum like "RentalCarTalk" that exists somewhere on the net, kindly point me to it. Otherwise, please consider adding a General Car rental forum that clearly applies to ALL car rental brands, both major and minor, so that we can discuss the best strategies for maximizing value out of rental cars, regardless of brand.

Here is the consolidation that took place:

Hertz owns Dollar and Thrifty. It also owned Advantage, but sold it and then Advantage immediately went bankrupt.

Avis owns Budget and Payless and ZipCar.

Enterprise owns National and Alamo.

As you can see, there are only 3 major players calling the shots in the car rental industry nowadays, and rental car prices are skyrocketing.

I propose a parent or general car rental forum, nonspecific to a brand, where car rental strategies, awards, miles, points, discounts, etc can be shared and expounded upon without reasking the same question in each of the individually branded forums.

Below is the Flyertalk Car Rental subforum list as currently devised:


Avis | Preferred
http://www.avis.com

Budget | Fastbreak
http://www.budget.com

Dollar | Express Renter Rewards
http://www.dollar.com

Hertz | Gold Plus Rewards

National | Emerald Club
http://www.nationalcar.com


Sixt |


Thrifty | Blue Chip Rewards
http://www.thrifty.com


Other Car Rental Programs (ie. Alamo, Enterprise)


This last forum, called "Other Car Rental Programs (ie Alamo, Enterprise) implies that it does NOT apply to any discussions related to Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty, Avis, Budget, National, or Sixt. Therefore, it is not a general car rental sub forum that would apply to any or all car rental agencies.

That is the sum of the problem I found. Hope you consider a remedy.

There is some value to what you propose since general non-program specific car rental topics can get lost in the current forum hierarchy. The current forum structure is more a function of the relative value of the frequent renter programs. I believe that the reason Enterprise and Alamo are lumped into other despite the fact that Enterprise is a huge company, is that their rewards program is really crappy, especially as compared to their sister company National.

In terms of companies, it is true that after Hertz sold Advantage they declared bankruptcy, but they were subsequently purchase by Catalyst Capital Group, a Canadian private equity firm and are now stable from a financial perspective.

Subsequent to the Advantage sale, Hertz almost immediately started up a brand called Firefly which essentially replaces Advantage as their deep discount brand, effectively mirroring the current Avis structure of premium brand (Avis), discount brand (Budget), deep discount brands (Payless/ACE). Dollar/Thrifty fit into the discount brand category for Hertz, but truth be told, Budget tends to have a higher quality product than either brand for a variety of reasons.

TL;DR
Sounds like it would just turn into a forum like this: "I am travelling to <blah> and need a discounted rental...spoon feed me!". We already have that with airfares & hotels in multiple forums. Don't think we should do more to enable that for cars.

FlyerTalk converted Other Credit Cards into Credit Card Programs, and moved it to the top of the section. Today, Credit Card Programs hosts a robust mixture of general card discussion plus threads about specific cards issued by companies which do not have their own forums.

Cars are not cards, and what has worked in one topic may not be appropriate for another, but I think the approach could be adapted because there are a number of issues which are common to all car rental decisions.

No where in my original post did I say that a forum is needed for "I am traveling to blah, and need a discounted rental."

I'm not asking for a fish. I'm seeking a place to learn HOW to fish in these new troubled waters.

With or without you, or FT, I WILL learn how to fish better in this storm of skyrocketing rental rates. My job and livelihood depend on it. It would be nice to have a common place to both share and glean that knowledge which would apply to all car rental brands.

I booked six trips with cars yesterday, up to 60 days out. Half those trips I double booked cars with two different companies, and I'm not satisfied with the price, discount, or the incentives of either. It is hard to tell what is going on, but prices are shockingly higher.

In years past, it was a rather simple matter of going to carrentals.com and getting a helicopter survey of price ranges across companies. Then I would go to the car rental companies website directly, and using my membership number and various discount codes found with an independent search, chip away at it. Average rentals were about $150 for 4 weekend days, Thu-Mon.

Now, just a year or two later, I find that carrentals.com is owned by expedia or tripadvisor, forgot which. Prices posted are higher though. Now, all the discount code websites are trojan filled malware bombs one dare not click on. And now, my average rentals are about $300 for 4 weekend days, and this is for economy. The game has changed, and I want to learn how to adapt.

I'm looking for a forum where strategy learning is possible, and where people genuinely LIKE to be helpful. You can keep your spoon in your drawer. Don't assume it is what people are looking for.

Hmm, I could see some benefit to such a program. However, I also notice that outside Hertz and Avis there's very little activity in the rental car threads. Dollar can go weeks without a post and even Other Rental Car Programs is pretty quiet. I'm not sure there really is demand for this forum, but I'll keep an open mind.

I'm also going to send this thread to some of the big rental car experts on FT>

Given that's the case, it actually may pay to just have separate forums for the majors (Hertz, Avis, National) and put everyone else into General/Other. Often the questions for the others revolve less around the rewards program and more about general questions anyway.

I wouldn't be opposed to that. Looking at Dollar right now, there's a thread from April, 2014 on the first page of the forum, Budget is September, 2014 and Thrifty July.

In part this is because the threads which would be easy to find in a general car rental forum are now swallowed up in Travel Buzz. Search there, titles only, with the keyword: "car".

I was tempted to ask some of my general rental car questions on the Hertz forum, even though they didn't relate directly or exclusively to Hertz in particular, for two reasons:

1. The Hertz forum has the most posts, the most reads, and is the most active.

2. The popularity of the Hertz forum is not driven by anything related to Hertz itself, but instead appears to be the very generally oriented "Challenge" thread, where program discounts of other brands, including brands like Avis, which has it's own forum and is not even under the Hertz umbrella, are revealed and recommended by Autoslash, who stands out as the most constructive contributor to the rental car forums.

It therefore appears to me that the Hertz forum by default, but not by name, has evolved into a general rental car forum. But to me, it just seems inappropriate to cultivate general rental car topics on a brand and program specific subforum.

For example, I have questions about AARP discounts, booking through Costco membership, becoming a member of a travel club for discounts, the value of earning airline miles versus lower prices for rentals... general strategy questions that apply to any and all rental car programs, and none in particular.

Where do I appropriately ask those types of questions, or share that type of knowledge when I stumble across it?

As a native English speaking newby to FT, it would never in a million years have occurred to me to look in "Travel Buzz." I scanned the master forum list, found the big bold master forum title that said Car Rental, and looked there for car rental topics.

As for searching, sometimes I don't even know what I'm searching for, because how can I know what I don't know. Using the search term "flight" is likely to get an unmanageably large return of unsorted hits on flyertalk. I imagine that the search term "car" would yield similarly unmanageable results.

It's a small thing, but it would be nice to follow the title to the master forum of Car Rentals, and find an appropriate sub forum where general best practices on finding, selecting, booking, and insuring rental cars in general are cultivated as topics of interest that apply irrespective of the car rental brand.

I absolutely disagree with your statements on the Hertz forum. There's a lot of activity in there in a variety of threads. Everything from Manager Specials to ride reports and upgrades. Hertz still has a large following among FTers, many of whom hold status with them. To say its popularity derives not from Hertz itself is flat out wrong.

I am open to the idea of a sub forum for general car rentals.That is something which a simple note to the moderators of the TravelBuzz forum could potentially fix...

If there were a refocused Rental Car Programs forum it would certainly make sense to move threads from TravelBuzz, MilesBuzz, anywhere else they might be lurking. Not sure it makes sense to move them into the existing (unmoderated) Other Rental Car Programs forum.

So maybe Rental Car Programs and then subforums of Hertz, Avis and National? I like that idea.

Sounds good to me.

I do not like the way the system software handles subforums. I think it would be better to keep the existing Car Rental Programs section, and within that section make Car Rental Programs the first forum, followed in alphabetical order by forums for Avis, Budget, Dollar, Hertz, National, Sixt, Thrifty.

I am not persuaded about the merits of grouping car rental companies with common ownership together. Generally, we break out discussion by loyalty program, not by ownership. For example, British Airways and Iberia Airlines are owned by the same company, use the same frequent flyer currency (Avois points), but have separate frequent flyer programs, and they have separate forums.

Okay I've taken the liberty of creating a thread in the Private TB Forum so we can discuss this there too. Please keep leaving suggestions and ideas here, I've linked this thread to the private one.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

Bruce

Just to be clear, I brought up the point about the consolidated ownership of the rental car companies merely to point out the reduction of competition, and the tendency for prices to rise as a result... which is good reason to have a cross platform discussion forum to share and ask questions about counter strategies, regardless of car company.

I was NOT suggesting that Avis and Budget be combined, or Alamo, National, and Enterprise should be combined, or Hertz, Thrifty, and Dollar should be combined, just because each cluster is under common ownership. That wasn't and isn't the point.

I just was looking for a general forum under the CAR RENTAL catagory of this website to ask questions that did not related to any particular rental car company in particular, because at the prices rental cars are today, I'll rent from any one, program or no program.

I'm in several programs.... Hertz Gold 5 Star, National Emerald, Avis Preferred, Thrifty Blue Chip, Fox something or other... I would NOT want to see the current subforums combined or reduced. I was just asking you folks to consider a General forum about rental cars... where topics ranging from insurance strategies to booking strategies, to in town plus cab versus in terminal bookings, depending on how heavy the levy is of the airport... where do you guys discuss this stuff that all pertains to general rental cars.... in that giant undefined "Travel Buzz", which to me sounds like "news"... you know what's buzzing?

I appear to have difficulty communicating on FT. Even the in the most innocuous posts, the meaning gets twisted in some way that I did not intend. Controversy appears to be the most driving dynamic of FT. From a pleasant thank you letter, to a hopeful forum suggestion... posts seem to get turned into some other meaning than was originally articulated, if only to deliver more fodder for debate. I have nothing more to add to the suggestion. I'm getting the car rental info I need from other resources. Thanks!

Flyertall, I don't think you've communicated poorly at all, IMO you've made a valid case for a general car rental topics forum that does not currently exist and it appears as though there is some TB support for it. The fact that others have brought up additional ideas of things to do within the car rental area of FT is not to try to mince the idea that you presented, but rather just to make any and all improvements that might be worthwhile at the same time.

Has anyone tried to quantify the activity there would be in "other rental car programs" and "general car rentals"? How many threads and posts about car rentals currently appear in TravelBuzz and MilesBuzz? Also, is there some discussion of this taking place in various destination travel fora?

There are 480 threads in TravelBuzz with the keyword "car" in the title. Two dozen of these had activity in 2014. There are 188 such threads in MilesBuzz, but none were active in 2014.

Other obvious keywords to check: "auto" "automobile" "rental"

I would not be in a hurry to close the less active car rental forums. I would wait to see if moving general discussion of the topic from TravelBuzz to Car Rental Programs produces additional activity in those forums. It is very easy to move all of the threads from, say, the Dollar forum to a general forum, but it would be much more difficult to identify the threads if you later decided to recreate the Dollar forum. A low velocity forum may still provide value to those looking for information.

I appreciate the information on the TB and MB threads. I feel differently about closing the other forums though. When you look at how little activity Dollar and Budget have to name two examples, it seems to make sense that there be some consolidation, especially if we're going to have a new general rental car forum. But, we won't be moving ahead without more discussion.

Also to mia's point, in Information Desk right now are:

Best car rental agency for award rentals

Best one way car rental

And that's just the first page, both would fit well into this new forum

As one of the mods who often have to decide what to do with a lot of "don't really fit anywhere" threads, count me among the supporters of this proposal. As pointed out above, the Info Desk gets many general car rental questions that don't belong there, but i personally don't feel that TravelBuzz is any more appropriate.

Agreed. I wouldn't be sad to see subforums go away.

Fwiw, I also agree with those who've said that the existing rental car forums ought to be eliminated and merged into the new general forum if they're being underutilized.

A perfect example of a thread that would be perfectly suited for a "General Car Rental Discussion" forum but currently doesn't really have a logical home: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...l#post24147268

While no longer having a vote I'd be supportive of the proposal. I like mia's suggestion of making General the first one listed, and then the various ones like Avis, etc.

Cheers.

More generally, I've always thought that FT would benefit from general fora in all of the major divisions: General airline issues (versus the other airlines fora), General budget airlines, General hotels (in addition to the other hotel programs forum), maybe General destinations (about RTW trips, travel books, TripAdvisor [which I believe is now discussed with blogs under external resources], tours versus individual tourist activities, etc.). When general fora do exist (such as destination Europe or Asia), people tend to think that this is about topics that don't fall under the other fora more than general topics in this area. It might be useful to separate the general from the other. By tradition, a lot of this material makes its way into TravelBuzz.

OTOH, the downside is proliferation of fora, possibly leading to some with very little activity. We also wouldn't want to decimate TravelBuzz.

Can we clarify the mandate of the TravelBuzz forum?

Is it:

a) a general "travel" forum?
b) a dumping ground for anything that doesn't fit anywhere else?
c) a place to check and discuss the latest hot, "buzz"-worthy travel topics?

I try not to use it for B, but in the absence of "general" topic forums elsewhere on FT, sometimes it's the only choice...

As much as I like to think it's A and C, it's become a lot of B as well. Hopefully, making this new forum will decrease the B-aspect, at least for rental cars.

I'd like it to be c) and in fact many of the threads are very interesting. Unfortunately it's become a) in the absence of general fora as well as in practice being b) since it seems to serve as a dumping ground for threads that no one knows where to place or move.

I think A & C, but am ok with it being for B too. Better to have a home for those that don't fit elsewhere than not at all.

Back to the car rental general forum, I think it makes sense to have one.

Cheers.

The problem with it being B is that I never bother to read it anymore because the signal-to-noise ratio is so low.

If TravelBuzz were for hot travel topics worth knowing about, then it might actually become more interesting again. Kind of like what nsx and I proposed for MilesBuzz with the creation of the Information Desk--and while people have questioned the usefulness/necessity of the Information Desk forum, I have heard a lot of people say positive things about getting some of that stuff out of MilesBuzz and making MilesBuzz worth reading again.

This does actually tie into the question of the "General Car Rental" forum because it's an aspect of MSPeconomist's comment about the utility of more industry-specific "general" forums around FT. If we make a decision that TravelBuzz is a dumping ground for anything and everything travel, then what's the use of a "general" car rental forum? Any general car rental topics can go in there (and get lost amidst the sea of everything else). But if TravelBuzz's mission/mandate is clarified to remove all that dross, then suddenly the necessity of general fora to cover various aspects of the travel industry (the airline industry, the hotel industry, and the rental car industry) becomes much clearer, and it makes sense to approve a "General Car Rental Discussion" forum.

And the converse is true, too. If the TalkBoard votes to approve a "General Car Rental Discussion" forum, then it also makes sense to approve a "General Airline Discussion" forum and a "General Hotel Discussion" forum--and take those topics out of TravelBuzz.

That might also help to clarify the mission of the Information Desk, too; in hind-sight, the mandate to discuss cross-program topics there clutters up the forum too much. I think Information Desk would actually serve the community better if it were focused on its core mission of being a signpost to help others use and navigate FlyerTalk itself.

I know it's not specifically on-topic to this thread, but to me, it seems that all of these topics are tied together in a way, and although I harbor no illusions that the TalkBoard will ever actually do something like this that makes complete and total sense :p, in an ideal case, this forum should be approved as part of a comprehensive package addressing all of these tied-together aspects.

JMHO & $0.02, of course. ;)

I recall suggesting as much once upon a time. ;)

As has been evidence by the "Budget" airline forums and so would prefer TB actively resist rather than embrace forum proliferation. One general car rental forum makes some sense but adding another 6 - 12 general travel forums doesn't to me.

There's been some discussion about consolidating or re-arranging some of the "other"/budget airlines fora, so we could end up eliminating three or four airline fora and adding one general airline forum, which would be a net reduction.

Any interest in resuming this discussion? Two more threads have been started in the Info Desk forum, both of which would be better suited to an all-purpose Rental Car Discussion forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...-rent-car.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...ar-rental.html

I'm still in favor of making changes, once we get the Russia Forum dealt with I'll create a vote so we can move forward on it.

Same here.

Bruce

This one might be easier to solve than the Russia one, so potentially do it first? I don't envy you all sorting out re-named Russia/description. I remember when we created the forum we struggled with the name & description. There is no perfect solution. But that's why they pay you the big bucks, so good luck! :D

While no longer having a vote I'd be supportive of the general rental car forum proposal. I like mia's suggestion of making General the first one listed, and then the various ones like Avis, etc. Look forward to CMK's proposed motion when the time is right.

Cheers.

Yes. At the top level call it Car Rentals and Programs. That forum would have all the general (as distinct from the pre-1993 company called General Rent A Car!) discussion.

Have subforums of Car Rentals and Programs for the larger companies and their programs. Larger by importance, not by ownership, and specifically excluding Enterprise. Consider having a subforum for Opaque Rentals (Hotwire, Priceline).