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Everyone is ga-ga for the urban car-sharing services that have crossed into the mainstream. Now Hertz is fighting back with shorter rental terms at its European locations.

It will now be possible to hire a car for three or six hours for short day trips, or nine hours for overnight trips.

A Hertz survey revealed that 61 per cent of travellers would be more likely to hire a car if they did not have to rent it for a full 24 hours.

The new service – Hertz 369 – is available at over 1,200 city and airport locations across Europe, including Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

Why am I reminded of that unfortunate motel experience in 1998, when the front desk clerk asked, “You gonna need the room the whole night?” Why yes, yes we did. But I digress.

This isn’t Hertz’s descent into the equivalent of a seedy motel. This is a good thing.

You might be surprised that a full 61% of travelers don’t want to rent a car a full day. But consider parking expenses and hassle in center-city European cities, and it becomes more plausible. Consider, too, that you could use a short-term rental car to shuttle yourself to the airport, and it makes even more sense.

Of course, it all comes down to rates. But this is a welcome option.

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To see how the travel business really works, sometimes it takes a good old-fashioned lawsuit. Vanguard Car Rental, the parent company of Alamo and National, took Orbitz to court, because Orbitz wasn’t listing the Vanguard brands on the first page of search results when customers ran searches on the online travel megasite.

The suit, filed Friday in the Illinois Circuit Court of Cook County, alleges Alamo and National rental offers show up on a secondary page because Vanguard refused to increase the commission rate paid Orbitz for online bookings. That rate was established in a contract that runs through 2008.
[…]
Chicago-based Orbitz called the claims “baseless” in a news release, and said Vanguard was trying to sue its way to preferential placement on the website.

In addition to requesting the higher commission rate, Orbitz demanded $1.5 million in mid-April, Vanguard claimed.

Baseless? Orbitz panned the suit in a press release, but in the process, effectively admitted to doing what Vanguard accused them of, and exposed the nature of their business model: pay to play.

The bottom line is that Vanguard is trying to use a lawsuit to get a sorting result from Orbitz that Vanguard and Orbitz did not agree to. In short, Vanguard is trying to use its lawsuit to get something for nothing.

So the sorting of rental car prices isn’t based on price. Other sites are up front about this, by labeling the first set of results as “preferred vendors” or such. But Orbitz doesn’t do that. They just show results. And those results are driven by — let’s be blunt here — bribes.

So why did the judge throw out the case? After all Orbitz essentially agreed with Vanguard and admitted that they rank results according to who’s willing to pay for the privilege. But all this is seemingly legit, according to the contracts between the agency and the supplier.

At the end of the day, this illustrates that you really need to shop around. Never, EVER use just one site to search for fares or rates. You never know what secret deals are influencing the search results.

(Thanks to Budget Travel’s Sean O’Neill!)

Travelers to San Francisco who opt for a hybrid rental car at the airport will soon get a $15 refund, in a city-sponsored incentive to encourage wider acceptance of high-mileage hybrids.

On top of that, car rental agencies will receive a 20% reduction in their airport concession fees, if, after one year, they can demonstrate that 15% of their rentals were hybrids.

Overall, good. But $15 per rental, not per day, isn’t that much of a consumer incentive to seek out a hybrid, over and above the fuel savings. But every bit helps!

Related:
- Incentives for adding hybrid cars to your travel plans
- Hertz insults our environmental intelligence with their “Green” collection

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Reader Phil writes:

I know rent a car companies often run out of some car types and then give you whatever they have left, or a free upgrade. Is there a best time of day to schedule a pickup so we can maximize our odds of an upgrade?

This is really, really, hard to predict, Phil. Of course, it’s all about the supply of cars. But that supply will depend on the location where you’re picking up, the local tourism and convention traffic, and just plain luck. I asked around, and no one would identify a pattern. (Feel free to hit the comments with your experiences!)

When I think back to the times that the car I reserved wasn’t available (which is very, very often), I can’t discern a trend. I have gotten upgraded due to lack of availability at nearly all hours of the day, and at various sizes of airport or rental location. I’ve gotten “upgrades” that ranged from a minivan at midnight in Seattle, to an SUV at 3pm in Boston, to a full-size at noon at Ontario, CA, to a full-size in Frankfurt, to whatever category a Chevrolet HHR is at 9pm in Hartford, etc., etc. But I’ve not gotten upgraded in those places, and actually gotten what I reserved, at similar times, too.

I’ll add that I really didn’t want these upgrades most of the time. I’ve argued before that rental car upgrades are generally not worth it in my book, especially with the price of gas these days, unless you’re going all-out for a truly “aspirational” ride. (”Sir, we’re out of Kia Rios, but feel free to select any of the several Lamborghinis we have parked in the lot instead. No charge.” Sure.)

Bottom line, I fear, is that you’ll be better off reserving the car you actually want, or the lowest class you’ll be comfortable with.

Related:
- Reader mail: Why would I want to upgrade my rental car?
- Rental car agent blows smoke up my backside, redux
- Reader mail: What happened to car rental late-return grace periods?
- Video: Why you never want to buy a former rental car

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Upgraded: Frequent flyer legislation
Downgraded: The value of your miles
Frequent flyer programs can be a byzantine maze. Above all, nearly everyone is cranky about being able to cash in their frequent flyer miles. I just tried winnowing down the uncomfortably large kitty of points for some Caribbean travel in May and was given the Heisman. But I’m not cheering on Washington state legislator Chris Hurst, who’s proposing a bill that would allow consumers to cash in their miles at 0.2 cents apiece. “Cash in” literally — for cash. House Bill 2707 is probably not going to go anywhere, but it’s meant as a shot across the bow of airlines whose point redemptions are increasingly stingy. Representative Hurst, call me when you start demanding 2 cents per mile or better. (via Pointswizard)

Upgraded: Delta’s business class seats… on some of its planes
Delta is rolling out new fully-flat seats on its 767s that travel internationally. Excellent news. But only on the 767s for starters, which means that the Delta fleet will have a patchwork of seating at the front of the plane. Sure, every airline rolls new seats out one plane at a time, but it’s odd to limit the rollout explicitly to one aircraft type.

Upgraded: Delta’s flight attendants’ trepidations
With Delta and Northwest in confirmed talks regarding a possible merger, the as-yet non-unionized flight attendants at Delta are looking to organize. Delta’s attendants might be members of the AFA-CWA as of February 14. Consider it a Valentine to Delta management. The goal is to “have a seat at the table” when merger discussions take shape.

Upgraded: Competition for hourly car rentals
With the success of hourly “car-sharing” rentals like Zipcar, the big car rental players are getting in on the action. Reportedly, Enterprise is launching its own version, dubbed “WeCar,” which is being test near Washington University in St. Louis. Just be sure to walk around the car and take photos before and after the rental. If WeCar is anything like their regular operation, those Enterprise guys will try to nail you for any damages on the car, whether it happened on your watch or not.

Upgraded: Gitmo!?
Disturbing and bizarre: There actually exists scheduled service to Guantanamo Bay, ironically provided by the happy-go-lucky sounding Air Sunshine, using 9-seat Cessnas. For those wishing to plan their trip, service is only four days a week, at $250 each way. Not cheap, for such a short trip, and you’d better hope they honor the return portion of the ticket. But you may never want to leave. After all, as Dick Cheney described the conditions for detainees at the base’s prison facilities, when he spoke to CNN in 2005, “They’re living in the tropics. They’re well fed. They’ve got everything they could possibly want.”

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Rental car add-on fees are already out of hand. But leave it to a Dollar Rent A Car franchisee in New Hampshire to kick it up a notch:

Some rental car locations are charging an extra fee to consumers who return their cars with a full tank. This “top-off fee” is being charged even if consumers present evidence they have that the tank is full.

Wow. Just… wow. Charging extra for a full tank??! Every time you think they’ve tapped out the possibilities for new fees, they come up with a new one.

And it was in the fine print of the e-mail confirmation that was e-mailed to the customer:

“Gasoline Policy: Vehicle must be returned with full tank or local refueling charge applies. If car is returned full a $2.00 top off fee will be applied.”

Topping off what, exactly? It’s full!

This isn’t a standard policy across any and all Dollar locations. Rather, “the fee was being test-marketed by Dollar at select locations in New England.” Well, great, then.

Note to Dollar Rent-a-Car: Customers don’t care if it’s a franchisee or a corporate-owned site. They just care that they’re getting screwed. If it’s the Dollar name on the door, customers will blame you.

If you want to charge a higher rate, fine, but don’t BS the customer with charges for fuel they aren’t using.

Related:
- Low mileage, high surcharges
- Car rental companies find new and innovative ways to screw good drivers
- Car rental companies hate New Yorkers — unless they live in Manhattan or Staten Island
- Wanted: Kinder, gentler gouging?
- Reader mail: What happened to car rental late-return grace periods?
- Rental car agent blows smoke up my backside, redux

(via Consumerist)
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Planning to rent a car in Mexico? Better make sure that card isn’t maxed out. Reader Paul writes in:

My wife and I have been to Mexico about a dozen times over the last 10 years, and about half of those times we have rented a car. In recent years I have seen information on various travel sites about the need for Mexican insurance when traveling in Mexico. I thought that this only applied to driving a personal car into Mexico, and not to rental cars; however, three weeks ago I came across a new twist:

Upon picking up a Hertz rental car at the Cancun airport (which, by the way, is the cleanest, friendliest, most efficient, of all Mexican car rental agency locations I have seen!) I was asked if I had insurance. I said, “Yes, I am covered by my VISA card for damage to the rented automobile.” The agent said, “Fine, but do you have Mexican insurance?”

I said, “No.”

Because I declined, the rental agency took a deposit (actually a “hold” placed against my VISA card) for $2,600 (26,000 pesos) to cover any potential damage!!

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Flight delayed? Sue!
A judge in India has ruled that passengers whose Go Air flight was canceled were due the equivalent of US$380 each because of the mental anguish they suffered. Is this a trend? Where can I sue for suffering through flight delays inside a regional jet?

Get on the bus
The American Bus Association wants you to feel green about hitting the road: They claim that buses — ahem, motorcoaches — are more environmentally friendly than passenger cars, trains, and planes. According to their numbers, a bus gets 184 passenger miles per gallon, while commuter rail comes in at 86 and planes only make 42. I’ve sat behind some black soot-spewing buses, and I find this claim hard to believe. And what about all the electric rail out there? Nonetheless, one thing is indisputable: Buses are more efficient than passenger cars.

Which airline has the healthiest snacks?
Domestically, it’s United and their $5 snackboxes according to Charles Stuart Platkin of dietdetective.com. See his post for the lowdown on the various airlines’ snacks.

Business class shootout!
Reader Gianugo has personally tested three of the all-business class airlines that cross the Atlantic. In his tests, Silverjet comes out on top, with L’Avion and Maxjet trailing. (No test of Eos Airlines, but they’re generally at a much higher price point.) The L’Avion review certainly jives with previous reports from the field (here and here). Read his detailed post for the breakdown of what makes these discounted business class airilnes tick.

No more being charged extra fees for returning your car with a full tank
Consumer victory! One of the very first posts on this blog — in its first week of inception, in fact — railed against Budget Rent-a-Car’s practice of levying a $9.50 charge if the odometer registered fewer than 75 miles upon return. This is one of those “what are they thinking” fees that gives the travel industry a bad name. I’m pleased to report that the Federal Trade Commission has clamped down and told Budget to stop. (via Consumerist)

Shameless self-promotion, part one
Chris Elliott, consumer advocate, National Geographic ombudsman, and general thorn in the travel industry’s side, compiled his list of the seven “most influential” travel bloggers. You’re reading one of them. Huzzah! The others: Paul Brady at Jaunted, Arthur Frommer, Holly Hegeman at PlaneBuzz, CondeNast’s Wendy Perrin, Ben Popken at Consumerist (where I’ve been a guest blogger on several occasions), and FareCompare’s Rick Seaney. Nice company to be in, to be sure, and a good starting point for your other blog-reading needs. There are seven runners-up, too, so go read the whole thing. Consider other blogs, like the Travvies winners from earlier this year. (Or heck, the finalists!) And peruse the blogroll in the pulldown in the right sidebar for more great blogs that I read regularly.

Shameless self-promotion, part deux
Upgrade: Travel Better goes audio: You can hear a few snippets of me commenting on recent frequent flyer mile devaluations on Marketplace, which aired this morning on public radio. If you didn’t wake up to the “dulcet tones” of my voice on your clock radio this morning, you can hear the clip and read the transcript here.

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This week, Hertz rolled out a new subsidiary named SimplyWheelz, targeted at the leisure market. Let’s get one thing right out of the way: “SimplyWheelz” is an absolutely awful brand name, repulsively stupid in its gratuitous use of the Z in lieu of the plural S. Trying to be hip? Edgy? “Urban”? It didn’t work, Hertz. Marketers, just for using that “Z,” you get an “F.”

I know it’s hard to look past the awful name. And it pains me every time I type that “Z.” But let’s move on.

SimplyWheelz (ouch!) promises to be a “low cost, low rate” brand, by automating everything possible and pushing the rental transaction online wherever they can. (Alamo/National rolled the automated rental out first. See here and here.) They’ll also keep a smaller variety of cars on their lot and rent a narrower range of car classes.

Segmenting the car rental market is nothing new, and it’s common to see one brand under a corporate umbrella go for the holiday crowd while another tries for the less price-sensitive business clients. Avis focuses on corporate contracts and business travelers, while their sister firm Budget targets the leisure traveler. National is more business travel, Alamo more leisure. On the other hand, Dollar and Thrifty, which are one company, both seem to target leisure travelers. Maybe they should start a new business travel brand… “CarRentBizzz” if you want to throw some “Z’s” into your name. ::shudder::

For now, SimplyWheelz is only live at Orlando Airport. Obviously, that’s a huge leisure market, and the car rental rates are already really, really low. I priced out a reservation for a random set of dates in October, and SimplyWheelz was indeed the lowest, by $1.26 total, for a three-day rental.

Hertz has built a reputation for solid customer service, so starting a largely self-service subsidiary is a bit of a risk to the brand name. Especially since they remind users that they’re a part of Hertz on every webpage — it’s “SimplyWheelz by Hertz” everywhere you look. Automation in itself isn’t a problem (see my defense of kiosks) but there needs to be a human “net” to catch you if the automation fails. If Hertz can pull off this tightrope trick while lowering prices, then they’ll have a winner on their hands.

Now if only they learned how to spell.

Walking around Paris during the last week, I’ve seen a few Smart cars completely smothered in ads.

Finally I got up the gumption to inquire with a driver leaving a Smart car plastered with fish, advertising a plasma TV: “Do you get paid for these ads?”

“110 euros a month,” he said. “It pays for my gas!”

He elaborated that there was one pink ad a few months ago that he found particularly embarrassing but otherwise he didn’t really mind the rotating ad program.

It started me thinking: drivers get paid for ads. EasyJet and RyanAir get paid to come to certain airports. Could there ever be a synthesis in the free rental car, one covered in ads? OK, even if it weren’t free, just discounted, would you drive around in what amounted to a sedan-sized billboard?

Have your say in the comments!

Tyler Colman, Ph.D. clutters up the internet writing about wine on DrVino.com.

Downgraded: Odds of seeing pole-dancer art on London-Gatwick approach
First it was the Kentucky Fried Chicken ad featuring a Colonel Sanders image visible from space. Now, a website’s advertisement featuring a giant chalk outline of a poledancing stripper is causing controversy in the UK. The image, in a field below a common approach path for flights to London’s Gatwick Airport, is only visible from the air, but is still causing an affront. It’s likely to be removed soon. But thanks to news reports and posts like this one far more people will see it online than ever would see it from a plane. (Yes, I’m guilty of supporting their marketing machine… I know…)

Upgraded: Kayak.com introduces alliance-based search
Aggregator Kayak.com tweaked its search tools ever so slightly, allowing you to sort by alliance (Star, oneworld, Skyteam) and not just by airline. But you can only sort it that way AFTER you’ve the basic search. (You can search preferred airlines up front, so why not alliances? Meh.) Orbitz has allowed alliance search for some time, but this is the first aggregator that I’m aware of that’s doing this.

Upgraded: Hertz’s environmentalist credibility
Last September, Hertz rolled out its “Green Collection” of rental cars and I was thoroughly unimpressed. Buick LaCrosse? Come on. Where were the hybrids? Well, it took nine months, but Hertz finally got around to buying more genuinely eco-friendly vehicles, with a purchase of 3,400 Toyota Priuses (or is that Prii?). That’s more like it.

Upgraded: Wine in coach. Viva jetBlue!
JetBlue is serving up some slightly more interesting wines than usual the usual coach fare. Thanks to a partnership with Best Cellars, the airline is giving their all-economy class passengers a slightly better guzzle. Choosing wine for coach can be challenging, since it has to be a) cheap, b) in tiny ready-for-sale bottles, unlike in premium cabins, and c) pair-able with a wider range of foods. I hadn’t thought about that last one before: After all, the wine in business and first can presumably be paired with the menu (though that’s not always obvious). But in coach, a wine demands “versatility in pairing with a wide assortment of airport meals people bring on planes, including pan pizzas from Pizza Hut and Taco Bell burritos with chicken and mole sauce.” (Taco Bell has a mole sauce? Really?) Either way, good for jetBlue, and good for their wine-imbibing passengers. (Thanks Tyler!)

Downgraded: US Airways right to serve any wine
Unlike jetBlue… US Airways, which got into trouble for selling booze without a license in New Mexico a few months ago, and which has been serving the sauce with a temporary scrip since then, was denied an extension of its license this past week. Tough break. BYOB, anyone?

Upgraded: Marriott; Downgraded: Ian Schrager (or is it the other way around?)
Look, I happen to like Marriott hotels for what they are: Consistent, clean, competent, and overall comfortable spaces to spend the night. (4 C’s!) They usually don’t have too much bling or pizazz, though some of their big-city properties have that 1980s glitz that has an odd appeal to my mid-to-late-30s, graying-gracefully, receding-hairline self. So when I hear that they’re teaming up with Ian Schrager, king of the boutique hotel, to create a new boutique-y brand, I’m skeptical. It seems like a late-to-the-game attempt to create a “W” chain within a chain. If it adds a little funk to the Marriott decor, great. (Bye bye brass fixtures, please!) But it also smacks of desperation. And isn’t Ian Schrager past this? Seems like he’s here to cash in while the cashin’ in is good.

Upgraded: WestJet’s honesty; Downgraded: Little old ladies’ pensions
Canada’s WestJet (hearts) little old ladies. Not because they’re nice grandmas, but because they’re walking piggy banks, and the airline’s got a hammer. Consider this nugget from the airline’s president:

“There would be a little old lady coming up and she’d have a table and she’d have a chair and she’d have six or seven bags and we’d say ‘Yeah, take it on the plane. No problem.’ Now we’re actually going to charge a little bit of money for taking that table and chair and those extra bags on board. And that incremental revenue that we extract from that little old lady is very, very profitable to us. Some 85% goes to the bottom line.”

Good for him, for saying publicly what other airline executives discuss privately. So I guess the business traveler isn’t the company profit center; the rarely-traveled senior citizen is. Bank it.

Upgraded: Amputees and their TSA experience
Got a prosthetic? The TSA wants to make your security checkpoint experience kinder and gentler. Good! On the other hand…

Downgraded: Sippy cups, and TSA cinema verité
A former Secret Service agent reports that she was harassed when she accidentally carried her child’s sippy cup of water through security. Stupid enough, but it gets more absurd: The TSA actually released a silent security tape of the incident, labeled “Mythbusters,” in their own defense. Feel free to view the videos, read the incident report, review the embarrassed mother’s story, and decide for yourself.

Upgraded: Demolition
Let me make myself perfectly clear: I want to help destroy this hotel. I’ve never been to it, but I want to help Spanish hotel chain NH Hoteles wreck the Alcala Hotel in Madrid. The company is holding a contest to see who can take a sledgehammer to the joint. Only 30 lucky few will get to play rockstar-cum-wrecking ball. Let the spirit of Keith Moon guide you.

Want to class up that rental car? Avis launched a new service in ten cities today, letting Avis Preferred members hire a chauffeur to drive them around.

As part of the new “Chauffeur Drive” program, the drivers are provided and billed by WeDriveU, which specializes in this sort of thing, and by not Avis.

Personally, I love the idea of someone renting a little crapbox like a Kia Rio, but insisting on having a chauffeur. Somebody please do it, if just for the photos.

But more seriously, this could come in handy if time is short, and you want both an airport pickup and the freedom to drive your own butt around town. Your chauffeur can pick up your car and be there ready to pick you up at the airport, curbside. They can also do drop-offs. Thereafter, you can drive the car yourself, as normal.

Every time you use their service, it has a three-hour minimum, but you can dismiss the driver at any time. Of course, hiring the help isn’t cheap ($30/hour), and it requires 24 hours notice.

Avis has featured chauffeur service in certain cities outside the US, such as Mexico City, for some time, but the joint venture with WeDriveU will be available in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

Details here.