Name: COVID made renting a car even more of a headache
Uploaded: 2021-08-20
Duration: 4 min 34 s
Description: Experts discuss the dilemma at hand and tips for future travel.

Experts discuss the dilemma at hand and tips for future travel.

COVID made renting a car even more of a headache

Travel

mm, I hopped on a plane to florida for a quick vacation. But little did I know upon arrival, there would be no rental cars. Do you have anything for later this week that could be picked up. Yeah. Well it's looking like we're currently booked out until next week. Um, but you can try again on Wednesday. We're going to have to Uber and I clearly was not alone in this situation that some people are calling the car rental apocalypse. So is this something that you have also experienced with your family? You know, we had planned a summer vacation up in the Northeast and initially planned to find to Portland Maine, but they didn't have any rental vehicles available for us. Just an incredible situation. Not nothing like I had seen before and I actually had inquired with the person behind the rental car counter, you know, what's the issue? And surprisingly enough, his quote unquote excuse was that there was a lack of semiconductors and I took that to heart because I'm in the semiconductor business. What caused the lack of rentals? How exactly did covid impact this area, rental car facilities, rental car companies downsize their fleets during, during covid because uh, just wasn't a huge demand at that point in time. And so they got rid of their cars effectively right to lower their general inventory in their general costs. You know, made good business sense at the time. What they didn't know is that the suppliers of all those vehicles were doing something very similar, Their supply chain specific to the semiconductor business that I'm in? No, they dramatically decrease their forecasts. The semiconductor companies. Well, at the same time, unfortunately with semiconductor companies that, that lack of demand from the automotive side of things was more than compensated for by all the I. T. You know, information technology requirements for for companies that were doing a lot of remote business, a lot of video business. I think there is a huge uptick in demand for just consumer use of the web. And once the automotive manufacturers figured out that uh the demand for cars really wasn't decreasing that dramatically. In fact, I think maybe has up ticked at this point. They were, you know, kind of last in line in terms of semiconductor supply, what can travelers due to prep for upcoming vacations or upcoming business trip? So number one is kind of a no brainer but it don't wait as soon as you think you're going to be traveling and you think you're going to need a car reserve now have a plan B. Whether that is making sure that they're a rideshare apps available in your destination. If you have to take an Uber to get to where you're going or even if you have to go as far as to hire a private car service budget a little bit extra for your trip to be able to afford things like that in the event of an emergency look beyond the airport is what I tell everyone because that's the first place people think of to reserve the rental car. Look for smaller boutique, maybe more specialized rental car companies that are likely going to have something from these other larger, you know, household name rental car companies have already pulled out. The main thing that I tell all my clients first of all is please get travel insurance. Trip protection has never been more important than it is now. Obviously as we've seen with experience things, just as we thought things were starting to relax, they're starting to restrict a little bit again. I think travelers everywhere now are wondering when will rental fleets come back to normal levels? How long in these times does it take to fix a semiconductor shortage? Cycle time on semiconductors? Today is quite long. In normal times. It might be eight weeks today. It's probably, I've heard of big times that companies Including my own, you know, that ranged from 30 weeks after 52 weeks. No quick fixes to this situation. Luckily my vacation still was a success even without a rental car