With the number of Australian travellers booking a car over the web is set to increase dramatically over the next two years, in its first ever report on the Australian and New Zealand online markets, US-research company PhoCusWright last month said it expected the value of online car rental bookings would grow from USD222 million this year to USD405 million by 2009.
Australia has some strong home-grown players in the online market when it comes to booking air and hotels, including Webjet and Wotif.com.
Now newly launched Oodles.com is looking to establish an equally dominant position in the car rental category.
The brainchild of Steve Sherlock, a pioneer in the online car rental market, Melbourne-based Oodles.com allows travellers to search, compare and book rates from major car rental companies across Australia.
The new company offers travellers a number of significant advantages.
Live rates: Rates presented on the Oodles.com site are retrieved directly from car rental companies’ own live reservation systems. This ensures Oodles.com rates cannot be beaten and all rates are genuinely available.
Book direct: Bookings are made directly with the car rental company’s own reservation system.
No service charges: Travellers booking a car through Oodles.com pay no additional booking charges or service fees: This means they pay no more than they would if booking directly with the car rental company.
No hidden costs: Oodles.com presents all taxes and surcharges applicable at the time of booking, ensuring travellers can compare apples with apples.
Fast and simple: The site’s design is unrivalled in terms of simplicity and ease-of-use. Instead of confusing rows of prices, cars and dates, information is displayed using simple tabs and colourful graphics.
Sherlock said that with low-cost carriers driving down the cost of air travel, car rental was becoming a more significant component of travellers’ total holiday spend.
As a result, it was more important than ever consumers found the most competitive deals from car rental companies, which changed rental prices many times a day, in the same way airlines changed the costs of their seats.
“Oodles.com saves travellers the time and effort of clumsily flicking back and forth between multiple car rental companies’ sites trying to find the best deal,” said Sherlock.
“But the real advantage is that travellers can book a car knowing they are getting exactly the same rates as they would when booking direct, and of course they pay no additional service fees or charges.
“In other words, Oodles.com offers travellers enormous benefits without any extra costs.”
Report by The Mole
