Elyes Mrad is vice-president, sales and marketing for Hertz International. Along with its other brands Dollar, Thrifty and Firefly, the company has more than 11,500 corporate, franchisee, and licensee locations in approximately 145 countries. He talks to Tom Otley
Hertz has locations around the world, but customers sometimes complain that standards differ between those locations. How do you ensure you are offering consistent service?
Well, it’s the thing we pride ourselves on for corporate accounts: the account management and about providing seamless service around the world. Corporates today need our services around the world, so we make sure they can get it wherever they need it, not just the car hire, but the billing experience and the after sales. Franchises are the way things are done, not just with us but with hotels as well – so I don’t think it’s an issue with just the car rental sector. As far as the franchisees are concerned, if you franchise with us, we have a team ensuring that service is up to the Hertz standard, so the customer will not see any difference in the service.
So what percentage of the 10,000 would be franchises?
Hard to say, but all the Middle East, Asia, Switzerland, Russia. Ireland is a franchise, and I would challenge you to find a difference with the service there and our corporate counters. These people have been franchising for us for 20 or 30 years, and they offer a fantastic service. In fact we learn from one another, and we have regular meetings and forums where we bring everyone together. So we don’t see the difference. We are very strong in appealing to the business traveller. Corporate customers don’t complain about this – it isn’t a concern for them.
For the regular customers, the travellers, what do you offer?
We have more six million members worldwide in the Hertz Gold Plus Rewards programme with four tiers: Gold, Gold Five Star, President’s Circle and Platinum Circle. Platinum is only by invitation, and the offer differs slightly in each of those. Whatever level the member is, for that end user we offer the have Gold Experience. For instance you don’t need to go to the car rental location reception – instead you receive a SMS or email detailing the location of the car, the keys are in the ignition and you just show your driving licence as you leave. If you don’t like the car you can change it, and when you bring back the car we send you your statement within a matter of minutes.
We also have dedicated Collections – Dream, Green, Family, Fun/Adrenaline and Prestige, and now have our car-sharing service, which is a technology that allows you to access our cars without going to any of our locations. Car sharing is a complement more than a threat. It’s expensive for us to put together with the technology, but then the price reflects that.
You just open your smartphone app or iPad app, see where the cars are, have an access code and you can use the car for anything for an hour or a week. You can push a button and talk to a representative who can walk you through the whole process.
Car hire can be seen as a commodity, where price becomes all-important. And certainly for consumers, there always seems to be a less expensive distribution channel – does this undermine what you do?
Well we have different brands, Hertz, Dollar and Firefly, so the differences in prices are reflected in the different offerings. For instance, we don’t have [car] collection in the last two, so we’re like Marriott for hotels – they have different brands offering different services and so do we, and customers expect different things.
Yes, but Hertz also offers different prices through different channels, so you can pick up promotional deals with, for instance, American Express, and get some very competitive prices. And in the end that’s a problem because the price is never the price, there’s always a way of getting it cheaper.
In fact we have a price parity across the channels. When you look at a Hertz channel it will be the same price unless you go to a specific partner. So there might be a 10 per cent discount because it’s a value we give through a partnership if you are top tier with Air France, or Lufthansa or American Express. I would say we are one of the few who make sure that we do not allow some other channel to decide the price. We don’t give net price. If you go to a broker channel they can’t decide a price. If they see a cheaper price the terms and conditions are different, or it’s a partner channel. It’s managed and in fact we offer a Best Rates Guarantee.