What is the daily average number of rentals made by the four major
rental car companies (AVIS,HERTZ,DOLLAR,NATIONAL) from the following
20 airport locations -ATL, ORD, LAX, DFW, SFO, DEN, MSP, DTW, MIA,
LAS, EWR, PHX, JFK, IAH, STL, MCO, SEA, BOS, LGA,  HNL.

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Request for Question Clarification by seedy-ga on 14 Jul 2002 04:12 PDT

I have gathered statistics on each airport you requested regarding
passenger arrivals and departures and statistics on the various car
rental companies as to number of overall airport transactions.  I can
attempt to cobble together a report which would use ratios and common
sense to make a determination of rentals by company by airport which
may be a sensible estimate.  This type of extrapolation is commonly
done in market research when price of the proprietary reports cannot
be justified by the project requirements.  Although we cannot attach a
spreadsheet to an answer at GA, a listing of information with
assumptions can be made.  Is this approach acceptable to you??

seedy

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Clarification of Question by kiwiflyer-ga on 14 Jul 2002 13:51 PDT

The suggested approach is acceptable... and I am assuming that
although the answer, although not in a spreadsheet, will list the
daily average number of rentals by the locations listed.

Summary:

1.   The twenty airports you identified represent 57% of passenger
arrivals and departures  in the          USA.  This information is
available from the Department of Transportation site.
             http://www.bts.gov/btsprod/nts/Ch1_web/1-36.htm

Although the aforementioned site only lists enplanning (boarding), and
only for 1999, other sites update the information for the year 2001
and list both boarding and departures.  Not surprisingly, passenger
arrivals and departures are approximately equal for extrapolation
purposes.

2.   More up to date information on the airport activities is listed
at the following site by state:
           http://www.officialusa.com/travel/airlines/

From this site, information was available as to total passenger
activity per airport for the year 2001. This information is summarized
in the table shown below.

I adjusted this information by a common sense factor (hub airports
don't generate as many rentals as destination airports (most of the
top 20 airports are hub airports) so even though they generate 57% of
passenger activity they probably represent a smaller percentage of
true arrivals.  My judgement of this common sense factor can be
changed if you see the factor differently.  I have personally traveled
to ALL the airports on the top 20 list so I feel qualified to make a
judgement on the hub activity.

3.    The transactions per rental car company along with the percent
of transactions at airports is            available from the following
website:

            http://www.fleet-central.com/arn/00stat3.cfm

This website is erratic on its availability.  I was fortunate to find
it working and printed out the stats.  Some extrapolation was
necessary as to year since the year 2000 was nicely filled in while
the year 2001 was not.  I made adjustment where necessary to complete
the airport transactions per rental car company, sales volume overall
and the average sale per airport transaction per rental car company. 
This last calculation was done to test for reasonableness.  The
average transaction was valued at $211 per rental with a range of
$173-228.

4.   I created a ratio of transactions for each of the key airports by
taking the rental company transactions as a percentage of all airport
transactions by the adjusted passenger activity per airport vs the
total passenger activity.  This rental activity ratio was divided by 2
assuming that 50% of transactions were rentals and 50% were returns. 
You were only interested in the rental activity.

5.   The spreadsheet calculations resulted in a final tabulation of
rentals per day (I used 350 days) to come up with the rentals per day
by airport by rental car company.  OK.....I had to assume that all the
companies were at all the top 20 airports.  I found that trying to
confirm this was a monumental task which I couldn't accomplish within
a reasonable time allowance.

6.  The final result is tabulated at the end of this report.  The
result per location seemed too high for me....Perhaps my ratio of true
arrivals must be adjusted further.  I can do this in the spreadsheet
easily.

Following are the results:
          airport										  transations    adjusted   *             
**           ***     ****
Hertz	  21,108,000   6,015,780   90%		4,500M		240	192
ANC	  16,400,000   4,674,000   85%		3,400M		376	176
Avis	  13,023,529   3,711,706   85%		2,700M		285	176
Budget	   6,000,000   1,710,000   70%		1,950M		140	228
Dollar	   4,400,000   1,254,000   80%		  950M		101	173
Thrifty	   2,000,000	 570,000   66%		  559M	        168	184
Other	   1,481,758		   35%		  887M			211

*      % of activity is at airports versus local rentals
**      Overall sales volume of company
***     number of airport locations
****    Average price of a rental


Airport			Passenger	Fudge 	Adjusted       % of total	
			arrive/depart	Factor
Atlanta (ATL)		66,148,896	15%	9,922,334	8.7%
Chicago (ORD)		64,000,000	10%	6,400,000	5.6%
Los Angeles (LAX)	61,606,204	20%	12,321,241	10.8%
Dallas/Fort Worth (DTW)	32,307,091	15%	4,846,064	4.2%
San Francisco (SFO)	36,400,000	20%	7,280,000	6.4%
Denver (DEN)		28,160,000	20%	5,632,000	4.9%
Minny/St. Paul (MSP)	30,000,000	15%	4,500,000	3.9%
Detroit (DTW)		32,307,091	20%	6,461,418	5.7%
Miami (MIA)		33,600,000	30%	10,080,000	8.8%
Las Vegas (LAS)		34,087,378	10%	3,408,738	3.0%
Newark (EWR)		32,508,590	15%	4,876,289	4.3%
Phoenix (PHX)		17,568,859	25%	4,392,215	3.8%
New York (JFK)		29,805,588	10%	2,980,559	2.6%
Houston (IAH)		35,000,000	20%	7,000,000	6.1%
St. Louis (STL)		26,695,019	15%	4,004,253	3.5%
Orlando (MCO)		28,253,245	35%	9,888,636	8.7%
Seattle (SEA)		27,036,074	10%	2,703,607	2.4%
Boston (BOS)		24,199,930	8%	1,935,994	1.7%
New York (LGA)		24,329,549	10%	2,432,955	2.1%
Honolulu (HNL)		20,151,936	15%	3,022,790	2.6%
				
				684,165,450		114,089,093	100.0%
				
The top 20 airports represent 57% of total passenger
arrival/departures....



				Hertz	ANC	AVIS	Budget	Dollar	Thrifty
				/day	/day	/day	/day	/day	/day
							
Atlanta (ATL)			747	581	461	212	156	71
Chicago (ORD)		        482	375	297	137     100	46
Los Angeles (LAX)		928	721	573	264	193	88
Dallas/Fort Worth (DTW)	        365	284	225	104	76	35
San Francisco (SFO)		548	426	338	156	114	52
Denver (DEN)			424	330	262	121	88	40
Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP)	339	263	209	96	71	32
Detroit (DTW)		        487	378	300	138	101	46
Miami (MIA)			759	590	468	216	158	72
Las Vegas (LAS)		        257	199	158	73	54	24
Newark (EWR)		        367	285	227	104	77	35
Phoenix (PHX)		        331	257	204	94	69	31
New York (JFK)		        225	174	139	64	47	21
Houston (IAH)		        527	410	325	150	110	50
St. Louis (STL)		        302	234	186	86	63	29
Orlando (MCO)		        745	579	460	212	155	71
Seattle (SEA)			204	158	126	58	42	19
Boston (BOS)			146	113	90	41	30	14
New York (LGA)		        183	142	113	52	38	17
Honolulu (HNL)		        228	177	140	65	47	22

Notes:

1.	Although the rentals per day seem too high to me, when you test the
rentals per day times hte average rental per company, the revenue
generated seems a bit low.  Perhaps more information can be gleaned
from the company annual reports.  This was not done for this project.
2.	The fudge factors try to adjust for the passengers for who actually
arrive and rent a car versus transfers, locals, and those who use taxi
and public transportation.  I have applied the fudge factors in a
common sense way but may be off considerably in these assumptions.

3.  	Finally, I hope the assumptions and the final result will be
valuable to you.  Without costly proprietary information, the
assumptions and factors can be called into question.  If you need
clarification of the assumptions and calculations, please don't
hesitate to ask.

Thank you for googling with us.

seedy

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Clarification of Answer by seedy-ga on 14 Jul 2002 23:11 PDT

Thanks to missy who posted my word file at her website.  This will,
hopefully, improve the formatting....Let's see what happens:

    http://blake.prohosting.com/~woozle/extras/071402rentalsats.doc

Missy is a multi talented person who has a great answer and commenting
record. You can find her "stuff' by searching on missy at the
answers.google.com home page.

seedy

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Request for Answer Clarification by kiwiflyer-ga on 18 Jul 2002 21:54 PDT

Hi seedy 
Your comment that your figures seem light is appropriate.  Throught a
national service manager I was able to find that AVIS LAX daily
average was 1400, and HERTZ ORD was 2500-3000 daily!  The Avis figure
is likely to be very accurate but the HERTZ may not be so accurate.
Can you comment on this please.

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Clarification of Answer by seedy-ga on 19 Jul 2002 05:39 PDT

The GA system does not allow me to post my spreadsheet on this
subject.  In the final calculation of rentals per day, I divided by 2
on the theory that the airport transactions included both "rentals"
and "returns".  I questioned the definition of transactions but
decided the resulting numbers per day seemed high (at first).

When I look upon it now, I beleive the assummption to divide by 2 was
incorrect since that would make the average transaction price (which I
didn't divide by 2) too low.  If you remove this final adjustment from
the spreadsheet, the rentals per day would double at all locations
bringing the AVIS figure at LAX to 1145 per day and the Hertz rental
per day at LAX to 1856 per day. All other numbers in the final
analysis would be doubled in this "adjustment".

One of my earler concerns with the assumptions was the annual rentals
of Hertz at domestic airports then adjusted for non airport locations
seemed low by a factor of 2.  ($1.2 billion vs the "new" number of
$2.5 billion) From Hertz's annual report, their sales were broken down
as 3.8 billion in automotive rental (about 1.1 billion in equipment
and truck rental) with a split that suggests about 1 billion in
foreign sales so the new number for domestic car rentals is about 2.8
billion which is within experimental error with the 2.5 billion build
up estimate from the by airport domestic car rentals.

Of course, the "fudge factors" would account for other
differences.....

Any additional feed back you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
If and when you are satisfied with the clarifications, please rate the
answer.

Thank you.

seedy

I happy with the result but had diffuclty scoring.  I think the effort
put in by the researcher was 5 star and through no fault of the
researcher I got a 3 star answer... hence the 4 star rating!  Thanks
very much for your effort.

Not as detailed as you requested by you might
find some useful info.

http://www.fleet-central.com/arn/00stat3.cfm

kiwiflyer:

This type of information exists, although I don't thinh you will find
it for free on the web.

I found a couple of reports, which you probably already know about,
that should contain the information you seek.

From:

http://www.abramsconsulting.com/atd_index.html

"Car Rental Market Scan, a subscriber information service, is a
data-rich digest of analysis, statistics, benchmarks, forecasts,
trends, and general information on the U.S. car and truck rental
industry. Market Scan will be of great value to anyone interested in
the dynamics of the car rental business, including rental companies
and systems, investors, analysts, vendors, and allied travel
suppliers.
Produced quarterly by Abrams Travel Data Services (ATD) the leading
research firm specializing in the global car rental industry, Market
Scan offers a summary of high-level industry developments and trends
and statistical indicators in each edition, plus a special focus
section. Market Scan focuses primarily on the U.S. car rental
industry, but will also include coverage of the truck rental industry,
Canadian and European car rental, and travel industry trends that
impact the car rental industry."








Another pricey report

http://consumer.mintel.com/sinatra/ci/searchexec/?fulltext=car+rental&type=reports&list_name=noaccess&exp_rep=U213#noaccessU213


I hope this helps,  


Colin

Daily average rentals by airport by rental car company.  It turns out
that there are five top rental companies on which to report.  In order
of airport rentals:  Hertz, ANC (includes National and Alamo), Avis,
Budget, and Dollar....I need to do some additional research to be sure
that all the companies are at all the airports. I'll complete this
question by Tuesday, July 16, 2002.

seedy

Please excuse the formatting.  I made sure each column lined up before
I posted the answer, but the lack of table formatting on the google
answers box has resulted in the data being a bit scattered.  Please
don't hesitate to ask for clarification in this regard.

seedy

Hi seedy
Your comment that your figures seem light is appropriate.  Throught a
national service manager I was able to find that AVIS LAX daily
average was 1400, and HERTZ ORD was 2500-3000 daily!  The Avis figure
is likely to be very accurate but the HERTZ may not be so accurate.
Can you comment on this please.