Eric Oppegaard
By: Peter Altmann, Head of Mobility & Insurance, Amadeus
Originally published on Amadeus Insights
As summer leisure travel leads recovery, particularly in the U.S., road trips are driving domestic travel forward.
At Amadeus, we’ve seen car bookings climb 96% year-to-date compared to 2020, with no signs of slowing. And a recent study from Market Research Future estimates that the global market size of the car rental industry will grow 7.9% by 2023, with North America the major contributor to this growth.
Expedia Group driving more experiences with Amadeus
To help meet demand, Amadeus and Expedia Group are teaming up to expand access to mobility content. Thanks to our strategic partnership, customers will have more options to search and book their preferred car vendors on Expedia Group sites. The collaboration between our teams and car rental companies to further promote availability and choices to travelers is critical to helping the industry rebuild.
Working together to expedite the implementation came at an ideal time as countries started to reopen for travel and people hit the road and booked flights, transfers and road transportation.
With this expanded strategic partnership, Expedia Group’s family of brands – Expedia, Egencia, Travelocity, Orbitz, CarRentals.com and CheapTickets – will benefit long-term from our global footprint, technology and depth of car content. In fact, we have added 13 new car rental providers onto our platform, which brings our total portfolio to 40 car rental and 33 transfer providers in more than 3,500 cities and 191 countries worldwide through the Amadeus Travel Platform. Our technology offers customers easy access to find and book cars, helping boost conversions, and gaining traction with this new content as we see domestic travel gain momentum. In addition, Expedia Group’s ability to harness the power and scale of data to help travelers at every stage of their journey means that car partners benefit from end-to-end booking experiences from travelers booking on the platform.
Revving up for the future
Despite periods of uncertainty, according to a recent Expedia Group study, people are making travel a financial priority and are thinking differently about the factors that may influence their buying decisions. One of the key travel-booking decisions centers on flexibility with cancellation policies. The insights reveal that people want to “book with trusted travel providers which will protect their investment.” The study even points to the trend of North American millennials valuing flexibility in car rental decisions.
The car segment is playing a key role in rebuilding travel, and we’re making strides at Amadeus to ensure agents have the breadth of content to secure a rental or transfer for their travelers. Even though the industry is experiencing challenges with supply and demand, Amadeus is pressing forward to widen its portfolio. We are confident that we can help rebuild travel and continue to see the industry and partners, like Expedia Group, gain momentum on the road to recovery.
