Addicted to car rental brokers?

I just got back from Web in Travel (WIT) over in Singapore, which is held in partnership with ITB Asia.

WIT is the biggest travel eCommerce conference in the Asia-Pacific region and is a great place to connect with others in the space.

Attendees and speakers were mainly from the broker/OTA side but there were plenty of hotel, airline and tour brands present. The main area missing? Car rental brands. The only topic related to car rental was in a session dedicated to ancillary revenue for hotels/airlines.

Why is it that car rental companies are often behind other areas when it comes to online innovation? Car rental brokers continue to invest more in their websites than car rental companies do, with the result that commission payments increase and PPC costs are driven up.

There have been a number of changes to Google’s algorithms over the last few years that now favour car rental suppliers over brokers – but many car rental brands are unaware of these (or their Adwords agencies choose to ignore them). Now is a great time for car rental companies to reduce their reliance on brokers.

Are you a car rental company that’s addicted to brokers? What are you doing about it?