Online Booking Shows Biggest Growth in Car Rental Industry
Mobility as a Service (MaaS) 2024 projections look promising, says report
A report released by ResearchAndMarkets.com has revealed that the car rental industry was the largest service sector to take advantage of online booking, a feature made even more convenient with the development of cellphone apps. The firm cited that particular industry in making the largest shift away from more traditional ways of conducting transactions towards online options since 2014.
As a result, its contribution to the overall Mobility as a Service (MaaS) industry was significant with revenue forecasts to reach $347.6 billion by 2024, a growth of nearly 12 percent. As statistics for 2019 aren’t complete, the report used 2018 as a base for that growth. That year, MaaS enjoyed revenue streams pegged at $171.5 billion.
The report also looked at a number of lifestyle and cultural shifts, many of which are more predominant in Europe than in North America. In Europe, electric cars are making more of an impact on car sales, while recent figures from the U.S. have been less than promising, with 2019 sales dropping by seven percent.
Nonetheless, ResearchAndMarkets determined that the addition of electric vehicles being used in the rental and sharing markets continue to be a major trend in response to unpredictable fuel prices and increasing concern over climate change. Rushing in to facilitate that change, federal governments are introducing policies and even financial assistance to companies wanting to transition away from internal combustion fleets.
Emergence of Green Technology
One example used by the report to highlight corporate shifts towards green technology was Hyundai’s 2019 announcement to create a non-ownership service. The company also wants to make 11 different models of electric vehicles available on the market by 2025. Meanwhile in the U.S., tax credits to encourage customers to shift to green technology will expire this year.
Those federal grants elsewhere in the world, according to the report, are also being created to cut down on urban traffic congestion, in response to demand from younger generations in particular wanting more shared mobility options. Civic officials in London are already in the process to create parking facilities to accommodate what it calls a changing shared-vehicle infrastructure.
To a lesser degree, the report indicated the impact of public transit on the MaaS market, with an increasing focus on that mode, given available statistics citing commuting patterns comprising the greatest amount of mobility traffic. As a result, while cars will still dominate in MaaS markets, buses are predicted to create the biggest spike in the figures between now and 2025.
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