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Sue Dixon (below), managing director at Flexible Autos, updates Katherine Lawrey on the car rental company’s newest products and how it works with agents.
How big is Flexible Autos’ team and how big is your trade reach?
Our head office is in the UK where our reservations team is based. We have a team of seven sales people on the road in the UK who offer support and training to our agent partners. We also have a sales support function and a telesales manager to help agents calling in or making enquiries online. We offer a bespoke car rental solution, along with xml/white labels, to many highly reputable agent partners in the UK and globally, including all the major consortia – Flight Centre, Holiday Extras, HPB Travel Club, Travel Counsellors, and many more.
Where do you offer car hire?
We offer a global product and our biggest selling destinations are the US, Canada, Italy, Spain, UK and Portugal.
Which suppliers do you work with?
We work with more than 300 suppliers worldwide, and thanks to our multi-supplier approach our product availability is vast. Our growing list of quality car rental partners includes brands such as Alamo, Budget, Enterprise, Europcar, Hertz, National, Sixt and Thrifty. Wherever possible we are fully integrated with all of our suppliers, which means agents only see true live availability when booking with us.
What’s new on the market for agents?
Online delivery and collection: We now offer hotel delivery and collection online whereby the agent simply selects the relevant hotel when making the booking. We then request this with the supplier and confirm within 48 hours, while securing the availability and the price of the car instantly. Unfortunately, this service is not yet available in the US and Canada.
Premium product: After a successful launch in 2015 we have expanded our Premium package to new markets. It is now available in Spain, including the Balearics and Canaries, Italy, Portugal, Madeira, Mexico, South Africa, Greece, the south of France and the Netherlands. Coming soon in Australia, New Zealand and Latin America: To offer agents complete peace of mind when booking for Australia, New Zealand and Latin America, we will be introducing a new three-tier product: Basic: Full to empty fuel/standard excess/standard security deposit Premium: Full to full fuel/zero excess/reduced or zero security deposit |
What is the benefit to agents of booking with Flexible Autos?
At Flexible we care about agents and pride ourselves on outstanding personal service, from reservations to accounts, sales to customer services. Plus, by offering a 100% trade-only product, customers won’t find our prices cheaper anywhere else! Our strong and experienced sales team is dedicated to working with our agent partners to help grow their car hire business. Agents can contact us via our UK call centre, using freephone telephone number 0800 254 5101.
What’s the most frequently asked question from agents on your helpline?
We are often asked what is included in our car hire insurance and what the excess levels are on a particular car hire. We have made our website agent friendly so it is really easy to find this information. We also encourage agents to pre-purchase our Excess Refund product for their customers to ensure that their customers are fully protected.
How is Flexible Autos investing in the trade?
The travel trade is our business, therefore all our growth and improvements plans are completely focused on how we can make it easier and more profitable for them to sell car rental. This includes regular training visits, and we also produce a number of helpful, emailable guides to help agents book and sell our products. We will soon be launching our new interactive training website and video, to be delivered via webinars and made available to agents to watch in their own time. Monthly incentives reward key partners for selling car rental with us. In addition, our regular competition incentives offer agents the chance to win a variety of prizes.
Where is capacity most limited this summer?
Spain and the islands are doing very well and whilst capacity is not an issue at the moment we may start to see limitations near to the peak booking months of June, July and August.
