National Perks Up Emerald Aisle
<B>National Perks Up Emerald Aisle</B>
By Lynn Woods
A prime goal of National Car Rental's new president, Ernest Johnson, is spreading the word about its choice of cars--a unique feature of the company's Emerald Aisle service. "It's the greatest kept secret in the car rental industry," he said. "Lots of people outside our customer base don't understand the concept of choice."
Johnson said increasing usage of Emerald Aisle, both through gaining new customers and getting current users to use the service for their leisure rentals, is one of the ways he plans to grow the company. National also is looking to enhance its express service, including acceleration of the checkin process, he added.
Other goals he listed included: achieving and maintaining a competitive cost structure and improving the company's operating margins to increase shareholder value. The latter, Johnson said, anticipates the spinoff of the ANC car rental division, which consists of National, Alamo, and CarTemps USA, from parent company AutoNation Inc. Originally due to be completed in late January, the spinoff is still in process.
Shared services with Alamo is one way National will streamline its cost structure. This year, the two companies are sharing portions of their fleets for the first time. Cars that would have sat on the National lot during the weekends, when demand at the business car rental company is flat, now are being moved to the Alamo lot, where demand is peak due to the firm's leisure niche. Back-office functions, such as finance and accounting, also are being combined to reduce costs.
Within two months, National plans to roll out a redesign of its Web site. Speedy enrollment for the Emerald Aisle service and fast online booking will be new features.
Odyssey, the glitch-plagued automated system National rolled out last year, now is working smoothly, according to Johnson. It has been fully deployed in Australia, Canada, France and the United States.
National's pricing (overall and corporate) was up 2 percent last year, and Johnson expects the same increase for 2000. He said National was focusing on a new pricing strategy in which the rate won't drop during times of low demand.
"We're not going to treat ourselves as a commodity anymore during those periods," Johnson said, which is probably welcome news to Wall Street. National had been criticized by financial analysts as a laggard in this area, who said it consistently undercut the competition by lowering its prices and hence kept rates down.