Rentalcars.com aims to double size of B2B Connect business within three years

Global online car rental giant rentalcars.com will offer trade partners a fully integrated ground transportation solution covering not only car rental but bookable taxi and transfers. Last year, Manchester-based Rentalcars.com took on former Tui Travel director of distribution Fraser Ellacott … Continue reading →

Global online car rental giant rentalcars.com will offer trade partners a fully integrated ground transportation solution covering not only car rental but bookable taxi and transfers.

Last year, Manchester-based Rentalcars.com took on former Tui Travel director of distribution Fraser Ellacott to head up its B2B affiliate division, Rentalcars Connect.

He told Travolution he aims to double the size of Rentalcars Connect within two to three years through establishing further distribution deals with the trade as well as non-travel partners.

Ellacott announced that Rentalcars Connect will be offering its integrated platform for both car rental and other ground transportation choices to cover all budgets, as well as develop more travel agent-centric systems to make integration easier.

The next stage of development will be to include offline partner support for both.

“We may be the most successful online car rental business in the world, but we still have a small slice of the overall global mobility and ground transportation pie,” he said.

“This is genuinely about forging win-win partnerships where we provide value and more choice for the customer, whilst working together to grow our partners’ business and their customers’ loyalty.”

Rentalcars Connect currently has white label website and co-branding deals with over 3,000 travel brands globally including over 80 airlines.

Ellacott said Rentalcars Connect takes a flexible approach to trade commercial terms, offering commission based and revenue share options.

“I’m open to the partner models we look at to make sure we have the processes and policies in place to drive growth with our partners,” he added.

Rentalcars.com is poised to build on its leading B2C position in car rental by aggressively growing its taxi and transfer brand Rideways which it claims offers greater coverage than Uber.

Ellacott said trade partners of Rentalcars Connect can now easily access Rentalcars.com and Rideways products, as well as benefitting from the technology behind one of the best-converting consumer websites in the business.

Rentalcars says because it is constantly running tests on its own website partners, in theory, will get a better converting site than its own as they get a version that has been tested. The vision is to provide a seamless, one-stop-shop integration for their partners.

Rentalcars Connect was established six years ago and today represents one of the largest and highest growing channels of over £1 billion turnover business.

Sister company, Priceline-owned accommodation website Booking.com underlined its intention to work with the trade last year with the launch of an agent portal pilot.