the car rental market | France

1.1 Definition and scope of the study

Short-term car rental or vehicle rental is a service offered by a company that provides customers with vehicle rentals for short periods of time ranging from a few hours to a few weeks. Rental companies often have many local branches, allowing customers to return their vehicles to a different location than where they were picked it up.

Most rental agencies are located in airport terminals, in the immediate vicinity of train stations and in city centers, and reservations can be made online through a website. Thus, the car rental market concerns all operations between companies and individuals allowing the borrowing of a vehicle for a specific period of time. a distinction is usually made between short-term rentals and long-term rentals, or leasing, in which the renter is the lessor.

In 2019, there were nearly 8 million short-term vehicle rentals. The combination of several phenomena, including sustained growth in tourism, the emergence of short-term rental as an alternative to vehicle ownership, but also changes in the behavior of motorists, who are more inclined to adopt new forms of mobility, are contributing to the structural growth of the car rental market in France.

The COVID-19 crisis has disrupted the market. Indeed, the various measures of restrictions and travel limitations have directly affected the short-term vehicle rental sector. As a result, the sector's leading companies, Europcar and Hertz, have filed for bankruptcy in the United States since 2020, due to their financial difficulties. However, the recovery of tourism and the lifting of health restrictions in Europe, and more particularly in France, suggests a strong recovery in activity in 2021 with significant price increases in the most popular regions.