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Car Rental Policy – Best Practices

It is very common for companies to have a contract with car rental agencies. Probably you have one too! Such contracts typically offer special rates for certain types of vehicles & may also offer free upgrades if you reserve a vehicle up to a certain size. So your policy gets influenced by this contract and Routespring allows maximizing the utilization of your special agreement with rental agencies. 

Maximum class (vehicle size) allowance

Does your contract offer you free upgrades if you book a vehicle up to a certain size? If yes, you can set the largest vehicle size that gives you the upgrade. For example, the contract may say that your employees will get a free upgrade to full-size vehicles if you book up to the standard-size vehicle. Why pay for a full-size vehicle when you can get a free upgrade? So in this case, you should consider setting the maximum class allowance to “standard-size” vehicles. Your travelers will continue to see vehicles with higher sizes/classes, but those will be flagged out-of-policy. 

Vehicle type allowance

Your contract with the rental agency could be providing you with special rates on specific types of vehicles (such as cars, SUVs, and vans). If that’s the case, you can allow only those vehicle types for which you get special rates. Besides that, due to the nature of your business operations, you could consider allowing only specific types of vehicles. Your travelers will continue to see all available vehicles but only allowed vehicle types will be shown within the policy. Rest all will be flagged out-of-policy.

Absolute price limit (per day including taxes & fees)

Car rental prices vary greatly from destination to destination. They may even differ for airport vs city locations. Due to this complexity, most of our customers prefer not to set any pricing limits for their travelers. But if you’d prefer to set the pricing limit, you can configure it. This limit applies to per-day rental rates inclusive of any taxes & fees. If any rate is higher than this limit, it will be flagged out-of-policy.
 

Relative price limit 

In the case of car rentals, the relative price is calculated from the cheapest per-day rental rate available in the given location. 
 
You can set the percentage or dollar amount relative to price limits. For example, if the cheapest per-day rental rate is $50, then with a 20% relative limit, the maximum price limit will be $60 (20% above the $50 cheapest per-day rental rate). Whereas, in the same example, if you configure a $50 relative limit, the maximum price limit will be $100 ($50 above $50 cheapest per day rental rate).
 
However, similar to absolute price limits, most of our customers prefer not to set any pricing limits for their travelers.