“Whilst we are anticipating lower volumes of car rental, we are tightening fleet capacity and planning a further improvement in pricing and a step-change improvement in utilisation. “In addition, the full year benefits of last year's restructuring together with the impact of further cost actions are now being realised. He added: “The number of rentals will go down, but that doesn’t mean we’ll accept that decline.”
The entire Avis operation will be under review this year. Avis is expected to further reduce its workforce this summer by 5% in Europe following the 10% cuts made at the end of last year. The car rental company is hoping to save about 16 million Euros every year with the measures which will include reducing its fleet size and closing any unprofitable car hire locations. This cost cutting is an effort to shore up last year’s annual losses of around 9.8 million Euros.
The measures come as a response to the global economic crisis which has hit car rental hard due to a decrease in the manufacture of cars and a reduction in the number of people taking holidays. A fall in used car prices has also meant that car hire companies are struggling to sell off the older vehicles from their fleets. The car rental giant Enterprise Rent a Car is also thought to be currently reviewing their car rental prices.