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Europcar reorganises low cost unit following Goldcar purchase
Former Goldcar CEO Juan-Carlos Azcona is to manage Europcar’s low cost business unit, which has been re-organised following the group’s recent acquisition of Goldcar.
The unit will also include InterRent, which will be re-positioned as a mid-tier brand.
Europcar said the combination of the Goldcar and InterRent brands would allow it to build a large platform and to benefit from significant scale within the low cost segment.
The unit is expected to generate at least 15% of the Group’s revenues ‘in the near future’.
"In order to fully benefit from the agility of Goldcar’s organisational structure, their lean processes and a solid, flexible and scalable IT system, the InterRent~brand and business will be operated by Goldcar in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and the UK, it said.
As a result, InterRent will progressively be repositioned as the mid-tier brand of the Group and will target leisure customers.
"Positioning InterRent in the mid-tier market is a strategic move to address a segment which is estimated to represent around 20% of the overall market with significant upside coming from the market trend dynamics," said Fabrizio Ruggiero, deputy CEO sales, marketing, customers and low cost.
"After only three months since completing the Goldcar acquisition, we have been able to establish our strategic positioning in the low cost market," he added.
"We have started to execute on our plan for our Low Cost Business Unit in order to deliver the full extent of the value creation that we were foreseeing and presented at the time of the acquisition. Hence, we wish to reiterate our confidence with regards to delivering at least 30 million euros of cost synergies by the end of 2020.
"Furthermore, the definition of our new brand architecture gives us a great opportunity to fully address and develop our leadership on the three layers of the market we operate in, namely upscale / premium with Europcar, mid-tier with InterRent and Low Cost with Goldcar.
"We do believe this new brand platform will allow us to expand our customer reach through stronger brand preference and~ strengthen our undisputed leadership."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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