LIHU‘E — As rental-car prices soar and availability is scarce this summer on Kaua‘i, “the largest car-rental company in the U.S. and the parent company of the Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental, and Alamo Rent A Car,” according to Forbes, have begun to add vehicles back into its fleet.
Enterprise Holdings, like the rest of the industry, is seeing increased demand for vehicles for travel across all areas of the nation.
“We anticipate this strong demand will continue throughout the summer,” said Lisa Martini of Enterprise Holdings.
“In addition to increased overall demand, other trends we are seeing are increases in the length of rentals and demand for specialty vehicles such as vans, pickup trucks, convertibles and large SUVs.
Martini said Enterprise Holdings took a very-thoughtful approach to its fleet strategy throughout the pandemic.
“While we reduced the number of vehicles in our fleet in spring 2020 when travel came to a virtual standstill, we did that thoughtfully to support ongoing transportation needs,” Martini said. “As demand started to return early last summer, we began adding vehicles back into our fleet and making commitments for new-vehicle purchases from our manufacturing partners so that we could refresh our fleet as we normally would, and also to meet the demand as it returned.”
However, Enterprise Holdings is still below pre-pandemic fleet levels. Yet Martini said its fleet is not down significantly.
“Our relationships with manufacturing partners remain strong, and our teams are working hard to secure additional vehicles — both new and low-mileage used vehicles — through all channels,” Martini said. “Our teams will continue to work hard to meet the increasing travel demand and support customers’ broader transportation needs.”
Enterprise Holdings encourages visitors to reserve vehicles as early as possible.
“Providing flexible travel dates and branch pick-up locations in your search may also help increase your options,” Martini said. “In fact, enterprise.com has added a feature that helps to redirect customers to other nearby locations — if available — during the online reservation process when they are booking if their selected location is showing no vehicle availability.”
Additionally, when it comes to rental-car pricing, Martini said the spring and summer travel season are the busiest time of the year, with many people traveling.
“Our rates are determined by several supply-and-demand factors, including location, dates of travel, length of rental, availability, as well as when the reservation was made,” Martini said.
Are they hiring again? More tourist coming.
They hate to see locals making money. Rental car companies are a stain to our island. Their profits are not spent on island as local establishments. They offer minimum wage paying jobs and reward only their upper management. Limit the amount of corporate rentals.
Kauai is finite and has limited resources, Just like a building has a MAX OCCUPANCY so should Kauai. Traffic is horrendous. Looks like the pandemic didn’t teach anybody anything!
Enrique – Agree. How is it possible that a full year of a complete change here – didnt teach us ANYTHING??
We do not want and do not need more cars and people.
Better to let us rent our own cars and keep the island liveable for *residents*
Hi Kerry,
I would love to help the locals by renting car from them, can you assist?
Legislators please limit the amount of rental cars these big corporate companies can have in Hawaii. Stimulate the local economy by allowing and promoting TURO for locals to help them get ahead just a little make a few dollars so there not struggling. Calling on you law makers we voted for you.
The rental car businesses need to stop renting 4 wheel drive units…the entitled tourists are 4 wheeling all over the island…I just had to have one removed from my pasture.. rude dude that had never driven one before…$1200 towing removal..
Uber and lyft are more or less non existant in Kauai. Traditional taxis are expensive as always. Kaui’s bus situation is terrible. Visitors have no choice but rent a car to get around. So locals would like to see the hotels go empty and everyone to lose their jobs? The “I like it quiet” approach is not very well thought out. Take all those tourist taxes and build a legitimate transit system that circumnavigates the island, or put up with the rental cars, or lose tons of business. Those are your choices.