Businesses are adding automated on-street car rental to travel policies in response to growing demand for sustainable business travel as employees return to work, according to rental company Enterprise.
Workers are now looking for greater mobility in more hybrid or home working locations, and often on a more ad hoc basis, resulting in on-street car clubs becoming increasingly mainstream for UK businesses, Enterprise said.
To help service this increasingly regionalised demand, Enterprise has integrated in-branch technology that geolocates vehicles in real time and provides every branch with visibility of both daily rental and car club availability across the fleet.
This means in-branch employees can advise business customers when a car club vehicle is the most suitable choice for a business trip based on their location – especially for last-minute bookings.
Businesses using Enterprise’s ETD booking and compliance platform will also be able to ‘default’ certain employees to a local car club vehicle when that is the closest, most convenient and most sustainable option.
This move towards automated rental has the potential to reduce delivery, collection and mileage costs for many business renters, the rental company added.
Paul McCorkell, director of business rental UK & Ireland at Enterprise, explained: “Automated rental through an on-street car club is becoming an important form of vehicle hire, especially for businesses transitioning the workplace to a hybrid working model. It means that we can deliver mobility to employees in even more locations and out of hours, through what might have previously been seen as solely a residential solution.
“Rental on demand brings several benefits. It enables customers to access a much wider range and number of cars and vans in their local area. It reduces collection and delivery charges because vehicles are close to where the employee lives or works, and lowers their carbon footprint.
“And because many of our car club vehicles are low- or zero-emission plug-in electric vehicles, companies can start to introduce employees to EVs quickly and conveniently, getting them accustomed to what will soon be the future of motoring.”
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