In the past year, many people's first self-driving trip has started with renting a car. Among them, there are a family of three who have been holding back for a long time, an elderly couple who have just retired, and college students who have completed the driver's license internship period. Renting a car for self-driving seems to have become a "synonym" for travel.
I used to sit on the tour bus, and the trip was from A to B and from B to C. Now when I hold the steering wheel, I understand what a free soul is. ”
During the May Day holiday in 2023, "revenge travel" has officially entered the public eye. According to the data of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, there were a total of 27.4 billion people chose to travel domestically, a year-on-year increase of 1289%。There are also many tourists who choose to rent a car to travel. Car rental brand eHi Car Rental provided such a set of data: during the May Day period, the active users of the eHi Car Rental app increased by 200% year-on-year compared to 2019, and the orders and revenue exceeded the record high level by several times, with about half of the orders coming from the post-90s and post-00s.
When young people account for half of the car rental bookings, the meaning of travel has also changed. A few years ago, without many options, people preferred to choose a group tour with a tight schedule. At present, with the increasing convenience of travel, everyone also hopes to open up the "last ten kilometers" at the travel level through car rental, and unlock a freer and more flexible journey in the form of small groups of relatives and friends, so that everyone can have a free trip.
In "the happiest place in the world".
Do it twice as happy.
For most people today, renting a car for yourself is perhaps no longer news. Young people have become accustomed to renting a car at airports and train stations to start a trip in another city. Everyone evaluates the experience of renting a car, nothing more than whether the car is new enough, whether it supports remote pick-up and return, self-service return, whether the process is convenient, as long as the above points are met, it is almost the "full score answer" in the hearts of many people. However, for car rental brands, there are many more possibilities they can give to travel.
At the end of December 2023, Shanghai Disney Resort and eHi Car Rental announced a multi-year strategic alliance. Considered to be the "happiest place in the world", the iconic float parade "Mickey Mouse Fairy Tale Train" will be officially presented by eHi Car Rental, and some lucky users who use eHi Car Rental will also have the opportunity to stand in the exclusive VIP area for an immersive experience.
Doubling the happiness in the "happiest place" is a new possibility that eHi Car Rental brings to self-driving travel. Considering the geographical location of Shanghai Disney Resort, eHi Car Rental will provide a shuttle bus service from designated business outlets to Shanghai Disney Resort for car rental users who visit the park on the same day, so as to achieve a green and convenient travel experience while opening up the "last mile".
In many people's minds, renting a car for a road trip is just a change in the means of travel. However, from eHi's perspective, the brand has been thinking about how to organically combine car rental and travel to become an opportunity to enhance the travel experience.
In the past year, eHi Car Rental has not only announced its partnership with Shanghai Disney Resort, but also optimized the car rental process from the perspective of users. Including taking the initiative to break down industry barriers and taking the lead in completely canceling vehicle deposits; Launched a 24-hour eHi hive cabinet, allowing users to achieve unmanned pick-up and return during peak periods such as holidays.
Essentially, every user who chooses to rent a car and drive their own car wants their trip to be "full of freedom". As the first car rental company in China to achieve the scale of 10,000 "stores", eHi Car Rental has also been gaining insight into the travel needs of users, and has successively launched a number of innovative services around the "pain points of car rental" of users, including pick-up and return at transportation hubs and non-local vehicles nationwide, so that users can not go back.
Zhang Ruiping, CEO of eHi Car Rental, once mentioned: "Returning a car in a different place sounds very simple, but it is a test of the strength of the enterprise, which not only consumes a lot of manpower and material resources, but also involves the technical ability of vehicle scheduling management, and it is still very difficult to avoid all vehicles flowing from one location to another." ”
Hands on the steering wheel.
Every trip is an "independent trip".
Looking back on the past decade or so, renting a car for self-driving is not a new thing. Many people have heard of renting a car to travel, but when it comes to concrete actions, very few people choose to rent a car.
Among them, there are not only subjective reasons, such as large car rental deposits, cumbersome car pick-up and return procedures, uneven car quality, but also objective conditions, including remote violations that are very troublesome to deal with, and many "pits" ...... hidden in car insuranceOver time, renting a car seems to have become a paradox of "you go and I recommend, I go and I don't rent", and people also have a little bit of distrust in car rental brands.
In the view of Zhang Ruiping, CEO of eHi Car Rental, he hopes to build trust with users, meet expectations, and gradually resolve the trust problem of users through the brand's consistent service pursuit. A very representative example is that eHi Car Rental, which currently covers more than 500 cities across the country, all adopt the direct sales model of stores and outlets. Although the direct sales model requires a larger investment, Zhang Ruiping insists that only this model can ensure service quality at this stage, which is also one of eHi's core competitiveness.
On the other hand, as more and more young people are interested in renting cars, eHi Car Rental is keenly seizing this market opportunity. According to the report data of eHi Travel Research Institute, the post-90s and post-00s generations have gradually become the main force of consumption. The pursuit of freedom is one of the core demands of contemporary people, which makes them sprout new car habits, and privacy, safety, and flexibility have become the most prominent user needs, which is the "three sexes and three modernizations" summarized by Zhang Ruiping.
The "three modernizations" are based on these consumer changes, and the market is gradually turning to the trend of miniaturization, customization, and personalization. As a leading company in the car rental industry, eHi actively embraces market changes, innovates and creates a "Mobility+" model, and cooperates with leading enterprises in tourism, transportation, hotels and other fields around the world, so as to deeply bind car rental with consumption scenarios such as travel, accommodation and vacation. On the one hand, the "travel +" mode can help users unlock the experience of travel and enrich the core of the journey, on the other hand, it also provides a new model for the development of domestic cultural tourism, taking car rental as an opportunity to connect "clothing, food, housing and transportation" together.
In this way, the meaning of renting a car may become richer from the travel level of "getting through the last ten kilometers" and closer to the essence of "independent travel".
As Zhang Ruiping said, "What I hope eHi will be able to achieve in the future is 'book a trip', not just 'book a car'." "With a car, users are not only satisfied with the convenience of renting a car, but are more likely to use renting a car as an opportunity to feel the charm of travel more flexibly, freely and deeply.
For the future, Zhang Ruiping has always had his own persistence and judgment. "There is still a lot of potential in the domestic car rental market," he said. It's a surprising fact that the more cars you have, the more people will rent them. "To have 3300 million people and 2In the United States, where there are 800 million private cars, for example, the car rental market is more than 3 million units. By the end of 2023, China has 48.6 billion people have a driver's license, and more than 33.6 billion, and the current car rental scale is only about 1 million. There may be many possibilities for the size of the car rental market in the future.
Rent a car for a tour. Unlock more easter eggs in life.
Returning to the present in 2024, it may not be difficult to understand the essential reasons hidden under the craze of car rental. Users need a trustworthy car rental brand, a convenient and flexible car rental process, and a free trip that they can look forward to. Car rental brands that can do this will naturally become well-recognized in the market.
It's a two-way street. On the brand side, how to seize market opportunities and further improve service quality is the key. With the advent of the Spring Festival this year, many people also have plans to rent a car for the New Year, as early as the New Year's Day to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, eHi Car Rental purchased tens of thousands of new cars, and announced that all of them will be put into operation before the Spring Festival, achieving a fleet of more than 120,000 units. Whether the user's demand is to go home for the Chinese New Year, go on a trip, or go on a short outing, everyone can find a "new" car that suits them and have a more interesting "new" year.
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In the near future, renting a car and driving may become a more mainstream way of traveling, which will further affect people's lives and unlock more easter eggs.
This is not empty talk. In the past year, eHi Car Rental has received feedback from major auto OEMs: many people who place orders to buy a car do so after traveling with their families. Compared with the twenty or thirty-minute "test drive" of the 4S shop, the driving scene created by the car rental is closer to reality and more convincing. As Zhang Ruiping said: Before buying a model worth hundreds of thousands, if you can test drive it with your family for two or three days, the in-depth experience you get is not something that can be obtained by test drive. An auto OEM has reported that eHi Car Rental has the highest conversion rate among all their channels.
In the context of the trend of new energy vehicles, eHi Car Rental also provides users with the possibility to drive new energy vehicles.
At the same time, the purpose of renting a car is no longer limited to travel, but can also include short-distance business trips and intra-provincial travel. With the growing car rental market and the continuous efforts of car rental brands, the public's concept of car rental will definitely have more awareness.
To this day, eHi Car Rental has not stopped developing and innovating. As a car-sharing platform, eHi is focusing on the latest automotive technologies such as intelligence and autonomous driving, and is thinking about how to share them with users and how to create excellent driving scenarios, and on the other hand, it is constantly gaining insight into user needs and basing itself on the market to bring car rental services with lower thresholds and better experience to more users.
As with the market-wide ESG ratings released by MSCI, eHi Car Rental's ESG has received an "AA rating", which is the highest rating given by MSCI to the car rental industry in the world, and it is also a recognition of eHi Car Rental's past for a long time.
Of course, we also have reason to believe that there will be more possibilities to look forward to in the future of the car rental market. Perhaps, the more important direction is the ability of enterprises to respond quickly to demand, provide high-quality services and expand the possibilities of the industry at scale.
In these stories, we are looking forward to seeing how companies can respond flexibly to change with trust and innovation in the face of an increasingly complex external environment, and become game-changers in the new era of car rental.
Planning丨Triple. creative
WeChat editor丨Wang Haotian.
Author丨Wang Tietong.
Design typesetting丨Zhao Shumeng.
丨eHi Car Rental: Visual China.