Aussie car rental direct sell or agent saga continues…….read on!

The great Aussie direct or agent car rental saga continues with several industry sources revealing to The Mole that they are not irritated that Driveaway Holidays is encouraging direct sell, but that they are they extremely irritated that Driveaway is offering consumers its wholesale rates to do so.

Driveaway is owned by Auto Europe, which also owns the US based brand and web site www.kemwel.com and sources say they very recently set up an Australia site offering car rental at what appears to Driveaway’s wholesaler rates.

Kylee Kay, MD of Driveway told The Mole yesterday that she denied she was responsible for the establishment of www.kemwel.com.au with it having been driven in totality by the US company, but that she accepted that she was the only Aus based Director of DAH Holidays that set it up and so her name appeared on Aus documentation.

She denied categorically that Driveaway is offering its wholesale rates to consumers in Australia saying that Auto Europe is also given these rates and it is these rates that are being offered on www.kemwel.com.au.

She wanted to stress to the agency community and to Driveaway’s competitors that Driveaway was totally committed to selling through the agency community, also stressing that she had called a number of her competitors yesterday and had been able to secure direct consumer bookings over the phone and had also been able to obtain additional discounts to the level of the wholesale rates that these companies had been given.

She said that the on line clients that www.kemwle.com.au is seeking to attract are not the ones that would walk into an agency to book and it also appeared that the complaints were not coming from agents but competitor car rental wholesalers adding, if she was stealing market share from competitors then it was because Driveaway was the best in the business.

She also said that reality is that www.kemwel.com.au is doing very little business, with Auto Europe setting it up begin to target the direct purchasers of car rental which the other operators were already accepting bookings from, with www.kemwel.com.au never intended either to undermine Driveway’s bookings or business as it was targeting different markets.

Kylee re-stressed that the decision to set up www.kemwel.com.au was totally outside her control and it was not owned or set up by Driveaway.

Driveaway’s competitors did not accept this response saying that if Auto Europe wanted to target Australian direct purchasers they could have just had an exchange rate converter on www.kemwel.com and that it was not necessary to set up an Aus specific site.

They also did not accept that Driveaway was not involved or did not have any control over the establishment of www.kemwel.com.au, with one source saying that they had consulted the ACCC re this activity as a potential case of predatory pricing with the ACCC responding that it appeared it was very close, but rather harder to prove.

Another source said that they did not mind Driveway effectively direct selling but this action was failing to honour preferred agreements and rates provided to Driveaway as wholesalers not retailers and undermined the relationship with agents, this operator also urging agents to stop booking with Driveway as a result, adding these rates are traditionally a package rate for wholesalers not consumer and providing them to consumers in this manner was a political and business no-no.

This source also said that Driveway had to have had some control or influence over www.kemwel.com.au and to sneak a dedicated site in like this and then say that it is not their decision verges on unethical.

Interestingly a search on the internet in a range of categories ranging from Car Rental UK, Car Rental Britain, Car Rental England, Car Rental London, Car Rental Wales, Car Rental Edinburgh, Car Rental USA, Car Rental Canada, to more obscure Car Rental Wigan and European destinations including Car Rental Austria, Car Rental Switzerland and Car Rental Nice, has www.kemwel.com.au and www.driveaway.com.au coming out right at the top of every search indicating that Driveaway/Kemwel have spent and are spending significant sums of money on search engine maximisation and optimisation, estimated to be costing them several thousand dollars a week as payments are per click.

In addition it appears that Driveaway has dropped from its consumer ads the “contact your travel agent tag” and is also running a consumer “win a scooter” competition which appears to be aimed at collecting consumer names and addresses with travel agent entries ineligible and multiple consumer entries encouraged by asking respondents to provide the email addresses of three friends and providing Driveaway’s toll free number and web site for enquiries.

The fallout will be interesting to follow with Avis and Hertz insisting that their rates be withdrawn from the www.kemwel.com.au site and Flight Centre’s Skroo Turner last year saying that Flight Centre will not have as preferred wholesalers operators that go direct, with Flight Centre one of Driveaway’s largest customers. 

If the agency chains do not react in one form or another, either they are satisfied with Driveaway’s response or that they accept the situation as part of the contemporary changing travel booking landscape.

In the meantime TravelMole subscribers will recall that the current MolePoll asks the question, “Do you think www.kemwel.com.au  is aimed at cutting travel agents out of car rental bookings? 

Interestingly, 100% of votes on Monday morning replied Yes, but during the day there was a strong swing towards No with this morning 65% saying Yes and 35% saying No, growing from 0% No in less than a day.

More detailed investigation in our portal showed a substantial flood of new subscribers to TravelMole yesterday, which is always nice and yes, you guessed, the majority of new subscribers being from Driveaway, with TravelMole estimating that there can’t be many Driveaway staff that are not TravelMole subscribers now!

Substantially more than norm of the other news subscribers were from a range of gmail and hotmail addresses, with a number of duplicate subscriptions, but what was interesting and unusual that little detail was entered in the profile. 

In addition, further investigation showed that the swing toward the No votes, – yes you guessed it again, came from these new subscribers including the Drieveaway ones!  

How interesting – without doubt there is an attempt at some MolePoll influencing going on here and The Mole will be keeping a close eye on the Poll over the next few days – isn’t it amazing what technology can tell you!

This saga is likely to continue, but it may be more productive for all the car rental wholesalers and industry to get together over a coffee to clear the air and ensuring the viability of each others businesses, albeit in competition with each other – The Mole would be happy to facilitate that meeting – over to you guys!

Finally, even with all this going on, The Mole has not recieved any comments from any subscribers on line – so if you want to have your say click on COMMENTS below NOW!

Report by The Mole