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FlightCar offers its peer-to-peer car rentals at Boston Logan Airport (BOS)
Photo: Boston, Logan Airport and the 911 Memorial from the roof of Central Parking (wikicommons) |
- by Todd Romaine
Its been about a year since FlightCar launched itself with the attempt to
radically change the way travelers thought about car rentals and airport
parking.
The concept behind FlightCar is to give those that drive their
vehicles to the airport a chance to get free parking and a profit in
return for allowing the middleman (FlightCar) to rent out their car during
their absence. FlightCar's peer-to-peer carsharing model allows travelers the ability to rent private vehicles at a
fraction of the cost, in comparison to national and international car
rental companies. Think Airbnb for cars.
Since its initial launch last year, FlightCar has
expanded from San Francisco to now include Los Angeles and Boston. Despite
the oddity of the business model, FlightCar has signed up more than 15,000
members and have had some major financial backers confident that this
trend will become a new American, if not global, phenomena.
FlightCar has received some hang-ups, especially from the airport
authorities, who want an expensive take on the action. While legal
proceedings are ongoing between the various entities, other companies similar to FlightCar have moved in to negotiate contracts with airport
authorities and modify their business model to ensure potential customer
acquisition is relatively unaffected by cutting another groups into the
profit stream.
It is hard to say whether this is a niche market or something that can
spread throughout the world. My personal take is that I would only sign-up
for this program if I owned a car that had little financial value and
where I was relatively indifferent to the wear and tear caused by
strangers utilizing my car. It would probably just take one costly
mechanical breakdown to conveniently link the expensive bill to the
indifference other drivers would have towards my car. And such an
experience would probably permanently sour me if the cost was even
slightly greater than generated profits.
Everyone, of course, is
different. For many, free airport parking, a cleaned car upon arrival and cheque in your pocket after a long trip would be well worth it.
In it's latest twist, FlightCar is going after business travellers, paying them to share their cars - for a fee.
Predictably, international and national car rental agencies may need to
lower their cost margins to drown out FlightCar eventually, if it becomes a
threat. Likely however, FlightCar would remain a minority player when it
comes to the lucrative car rental industry.
While ihatetaxis.com does not offer FlightCar services yet, we do provide
very competitive car rental rates at airports around the globe.
Todd Romaine is one of the two Canadian brothers who were the brainchild behind the IHateTaxis.com website. For the story behind our name, read Do we really hate taxis?
Related content:
Need to rent a car? Check out
ihatetaxis.com airport car rental rates.
