As Cars Age, Do Consumers Swing to Rentals?

The company said its reservations are up more than 25% compared with this time last year, according to reports from its neighborhood locations. The numbers suggest a continuing rise in the popularity of holiday road trips.

The Enterprise numbers are interesting in part because even though the company has offices in airports, it specializes in local in-town outlets from which people typically rent cars for long highway journeys.

“Year-over-year we’ve generally seen an increase in reservations for the Christmas holiday,” said Steve Short, vice president at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. “The continued rise in holiday reservations suggests people are thinking of car rental as a convenient and reliable resource as opposed to other modes of transportation,” he said.

Enterprise has about 5,500 local offices, which it said are within 15 miles of 90% of the U.S. population. And for many of those people, a relatively new rental vehicle may be more comfortable and secure on a long trip than the car in their garage.

“The age of today’s average car is 11 years and people are simply looking for newer, more reliable options when it comes to travel,” Short said.