Avis Delivers Interactive Account Data Online
<B>Avis Delivers Interactive Account Data Online</B>
By Lynn Woods
Avis Rent A Car has become the first car rental company to offer account data to its customers on the Internet. After accessing the service on a separate URL by typing in a password and ID number, users can get information on total overall expenditures as well as drill down to find out the spend and number of rentals by region, country, state, city and rental location.
Other types of data available on Avis Interactive are the average length of rental by location; ranking of top cities; comparisons of average costs at a particular location, which might include, for example, weekly and promotional rates, versus the spend from the corporate rate. Introduced in June, the service currently offers some of these features and will be fully functional in the fall.
Before, Avis corporate customers could obtain the data, but they had to call their sales rep and wait at least 45 days, according to Kirby Bonds, Avis director of sales development. Now managers and travelers, if the company wishes, have 24-hour desktop access to the information, which is updated monthly.
Data is available to companies in the United States for any Avis location at which they have negotiated a corporate discount with Avis Rent A Car; Bonds said there are discussions to extend the new service to Avis Europe, which negotiates contracts with European companies. Avis Interactive was derived from PHH InterActive system, which parent company Avis Group acquired last year with the purchase of PHH, a vehicle leasing company.
So far, Bonds said, the response has been good from the 150 Avis corporate customers that have signed up for the service. Travel managers also can request a list of traveler profiles from the Avis Interactive Web site, enabling them to check the models of cars employees have selected and other data to see if people are in compliance with company policy. They can request a list of all profiles or ask to see only profiles for which there have been changes for a specific time period, up to the last 18 months. After receiving the request, Avis will overnight a CD with the data to the company the next day.
The Hertz Corp., which provides standard and customized reports to its corporate accounts either by mailed paper statements or on a disk, eventually plans to make them available through its Web site, though so far it hasn't noted a huge demand for this.