> I’m sure the rental companies have some digital stuff, but I generally associate rental cars with queuing at an Avis counter for an hour after a long flight, lots of paperwork and getting hit with fees etc. For exactly this reason I tend to stick with Uber on business trips over rental cars.

I just rented cars two times in the past two weeks. I was able to shop online between a few different rental car agencies (there’s only 3 big ones that own all the major brands, although I like to stick with Enterprise/Alamo/National). I made a reservation after a few minutes of shopping, I walked up to the counter, gave my ID and credit card, had the car in next 5 minutes and drove away in a total of 10 min max with the clean car that I wanted.

I’ve done this many times too. I don’t see why I would trust a random stranger more than a business who should have established best practices and proper insurance.

I also prefer proper hotels to stay in than random Airbnb. I don’t even have to talk to anyone at many Hilton branded hotels, and they have an online chat option in their app with the front desk.

My worry with both the car rental market as well as hotels is the constant upselling or offers/loyalty programs/etc.

The good part about Uber or Airbnb is that there isn’t any of that. You find what you want, pay the price they ask for and that’s it. I agree that there are other major problems with them but at least the user experience for buying the service is on point.

When it comes to hotels I either have to book direct and fill in my details every time (I don’t have a preference for any brand, so having an account with one particular brand doesn’t solve the problem either) or use sites like Booking/Expedia and suffer the constant upselling or dark patterns.

I don’t need your “loyalty” or “offers” or anything. I need you to tell me what’s available, take my money and get out of my way. I’d gladly pay money if such a service existed (that doesn’t belong to any particular hotel chain so that all the hotels are on there).

Uh? All airbnb does is try to push you to their 'experiences'. And God forbid you ever gave Uber your email address, they'll try to get you on Uber Eats for many rounds of the 'unsubscribe me from yet another list I never realised I never signed up for' dance.

Regarding Airbnb it's been years since I last used it so maybe they changed in which case it's too bad.

As far as Uber is concerned I've used it up to last year and I don't recall ever getting an unwanted marketing e-mail from them (disabled all marketing comms in the app early on when I signed up and they respected that just fine).

That's a good point. At my last stay at the Marriott near SFO I had a hard time figuring out what I could eat in the lobby for breakfast! There was a breakfast area for Ultra-platnum-gold club (or whatever they called it!) And a restaurant, but I wasn't sure how much that would cost me. Same thing with the WiFi, members only.

Uber is one company. It doesn't have all the drivers on it. You can make an account book direct at a hotel chain like you book direct at Uber.

> It doesn't have all the drivers on it.

It has a big enough majority that for all intents and purposes you can rely on it. They have other problems which is why I've stopped using it but at least in the locations I've been to, driver shortage was never the problem.

> You can make an account book direct at a hotel chain

This means I'd either need to find and sign up for all the potential hotels I'd be in the vicinity of in advance, or spend time signing up (and making sure to opt out of any marketing/loyalty/etc) a couple days before I arrive (I travel on very short notice).

That's the problem I'm trying to avoid. I want a single app/service/etc that will give me a big hotel selection (from several brands, and independent ones) with easy booking at a fair price (can be higher than the mainstream websites, I'm willing to pay more for convenience and to make sure the hotel isn't being ripped off) and no upselling.

All the times I needed a hotel it wasn't a planned thing - it was "I'm here in this coffee shop thousands of miles away from home and I need a bed to crash on". An app that can just find me the nearest place and a no-BS user experience would've been lovely even if it means paying a premium for the convenience.

> Maybe someone needs to do to rental cars what Uber did to Taxis.

Run up a multi-billion dollar loss?

Car2Go was pretty great. Hundreds of cars around town. Unlock any of them with the app, drive around, do what you need to do, then leave the car parked on the street wherever you end up and lock with the app, so someone else could drive it.

Unfortunately they merged with BMW's DriveNow and became "ShareNow" ... and pulled out of North America completely :(

There are apps like this already, such as Turo, which I've used. Cheaper and a larger selection as it's other people's cars rather than the company's own fleet.

I love the idea of a rental car just turning up. There is a lot of hassle when renting a car, all the waiting in a queue at the service desk, all the questions, paperwork etc. If someone focused on making it convenient I'd love that. Uber style driver turns up and you swap seats. Everything done in advance online that needs to be done. No upselling in person - you've decided what insurance, paid for it, provided ID in advance. Next time you don't need to repeat the process. They don't bother checking for scratches (who scratches their rental car but outside of an actual crash?). It could be so so nice. It might make me choose a rental car where I would have previous thought "meh not worth it, just do an organised tour" or something.

I've been thinking about this for a year or so. There's a lot of pain points that could be solved:

* Insurance not included in prices displayed in search

* Underage surcharges not included in prices displayed in search

* Receiving a different model compared to what was booked

* Paperwork(sometimes digital Onan iPad) should all be done via an app

* Phone should unlock car

Some of the traditional rental companies have tried to solve some of these issues and there have been a few startups in the space. I'm not aware though of anyone trying to build a ground up tech first competitor to Hertz or Avis Budget. It is an expensive industry. SoftBank money would be needed to achieve scale.

These things you see as pain points are all profit centers. If you got rid of them the “list” price would go up and customers seem to prefer hidden fees to price transparency.

No, the market prefers price discrimination to flat fees.

Turo [1] is copying the AirBnB business model... rent out your car to strangers. (Well, I'm not going to, but I don't do AirBnB either).

[1] https://turo.com

These guys have made a start: https://www.govirtuo.com/

That's basically what Silvercar does

Yeah. You pay a premium but the experience is very seamless and professional. Not something I could see scaling easily, at least how Silvercar operates, but really successful in its niche.