Galaxy Infoways
Car Rental Reservation
System Website
July 14, 2021
Product Analysis
Car rental online platforms are the next “Airbnb” for the car industry at large.
If Airbnb has taken over the world of renting houses and apartments, then
the car rental business is following its footsteps with apps like Turo and
Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Rental cars are a necessity for many people. They provide a need for people
who cannot afford cars, but still need to use them from time to time. As a
result, rental cars save the day, and they don’t seem to be going out of
business soon.
Car rental apps and car sharing apps are much in demand from the past
years. There are some proven stats that clearly state a win-win for car rental
and car sharing startups or entrepreneurs. Let’s check out some amazing
facts about the car rental industry that car rental startups need to know.
2
Some Facts and Figures of the Car Rental Industry
● In 2020, car rentals segment amounted to US$28,873m.
Image Credit: [Link]
● The report from [Link] shows the annual forecast growth rate at 3.4% (CAGR
2019-2023), which is resulting in the market volume of US$30,686m for 2023.
● User penetration in 2019 is estimated at 1.7% and is expected to grow at 1.8% by
2023.
3
Image Credit: [Link]
Another stats from [Link] shows a clear usage of car rentals as per the
age criteria. Car is the most convenient mode of traveling as compared to the
train and bus for all age groups. In that car renting niche, if you are providing
a self drive car rental facility, it will act as a cherry on the cake. People love
traveling and driving on their own. You will definitely be a game changer and
a disrupter of the car rental industry.
4
Scope
The car rental system keeps detailed records of both the cars and the
customers, the duration they rent the car as well as the type of car they rent.
The system will be mainly designed for a small company that renders its car
rental services to customers.
The system will have the ability to generate and print invoices for each
successful transaction.
Level of Access
The system will have two levels of access:
● Administrator
● Customer
5
Steps Overview
This platform works as a peer-to-peer car renting company. In such a business
model, the owner of the car gives the car on rental basis to the user, who uses
the vehicle for a particular timeframe and gives the vehicle back to the owner.
The platform provides several features to make it more easy to use and
engaging.
First, users create an account and the service verifies their driving credentials.
Once approved, users search for cars in their area and have the option to
search based on a whole range of criteria, like vehicle type, make, and feature,
as well as whether the owner offers delivery. Cars listed on the platform run
the gamut from basic sedans to high-end luxury vehicles, so there’s
something for pretty much everyone. Once booked, the owner and the renter
make a plan to meet to hand over the keys, and the driver’s off!
The process of searching for a car with the app could not be simpler. The user
simply inputs the location where they’d like to rent -- an airport, a city, or a
specific address -- and the app will populate a list of relevant results. The
search results listing page is a scrollable list which features a photo, car make
and year, price, a count of trips, and an average rating out of 5 stars.
Each car listing is packed with info that the user might want to know. There
are multiple photos to scroll through, as well as info about the number of
miles included, the insurance, and a description of the vehicle. Flat line
illustrations act as icons representing key stats about the vehicle as well as
important features like pet friendliness and music compatibility.
6
Features
1. Proper booking engine
A reservation made by a user is in fact a chain of automated actions invisible
to the client. The common links of this chain are — scheduling, transactions,
confirmation, and notifications. All the details entered are sent to the
back-end where admins view and manage all reservations.
2. Status of availability
It’s necessary to always stay up-to-date about the status of every auto in your
garage, that’s why availability status should be implemented to allow seeing
the overall picture of the fleet. It will definitely ease up its management.
3. Fleet management
This feature is necessary to keep track of the fleet: the number of vehicles,
their models, autos’ details, inspection, maintenance status and nuances,
expenses, insurance expiration dates, damages on a car, and much more.
7
4. Content management system
CMS is an essential constituent of your car rental system features, standing
behind your site. CMS allows users to easily add or edit website content
concerning vehicles, available services, locations, and actual discounts.
5. CRM system
The key function of any CRM is keeping the customer information in order
and managing interaction with existing and potential clients. As soon as a
user registers in your system via your website, the information entered is
saved in a database and shown in a CRM, it allows your managers contact the
renters, create a consumer profile, detect the return customers, offer them
rewards and special offers, as well as block the frauds.
6. Orders management
This feature provides managers with the opportunity to view and edit the
bookings that come through the site, over the phone or from the front desk.
Operators can then add such reservations manually in the order section.
8
7. Financial management
As an owner or a manager, you need a comprehensive picture of all the
transactions, payments, taxes, refunds, fees, and other accounting details in
one place. You can either choose a peer-to-peer model of partnership or sign
contracts with other businesses to manage these relationships alongside the
other categories of financial management in your system. Automatic e-billing
can also be implemented here to keep everything ordered.
8. Reports
Implementation of the system of reports can not only improve management
but also greatly facilitate your marketing. Monitoring a number of factors and
indicators, you can spot what bleeds you dry and what brings you the highest
profit. This real-time analytic helps you make informed business decisions for
better revenue.
9
Optional Features
Electronic identity verification
A good idea is to supplement your system with a software solution that will
help you verify the documents and cards of the drivers to avoid fraud and the
usage of counterfeit documents. There are plenty of such services to choose
from and some of them are with open API.
Loyalty program
The modern world is highly competitive and no surprise car rental services
owners use variable incentives to attract more clients. When you offer
promos, special offers, sales, miles, discounts, or membership right in the app,
you can then easily analyze the results and make personalized offers based on
the results, using previous user experience, location, etc.
Gamification
This can be mixed with a loyalty program for better customer attraction. You
entertain your customers, reward them for achievements, and exchange
rewards for special offers or prizes.
10
Stages of Development
Development of such platform is a multistage process that includes analysis,
design, front- and back-end development, as well as maintenance and
support if the client needs it.
Discovery
At this stage, the core functionality is defined and the features that will make
your concept idea unique are considered, the estimation of the overall scope
of work and product analysis, based on the client’s requirements, takes place.
The first step is car rental website development, planning database, and
service structure as well as putting together user scenarios that describe how
the system could be used. The features of a car rental system are decided
upon to ensure the due product functionality.
We often recommend starting from MVP creation. A Minimum Viable
Product allows launching a product with minimal features to test the product
and the market. Later on, the product can be improved and optimized in its
later iterations. Prioritizing the MVP features takes place at this stage as well.
11
Design
After completing the initial stage of the research and planning step, we
proceed to design. As for car rental website design, it stays neat with the
primary focus being on UI simplicity and effective usage of corporate identity.
It’s important to consider various user categories of your system and
applications in particular and possibly offer different UIs for each user
category forecasting certain User Experience. At this stage, we often deal with
the issues of the app usability, color scheme, intuitive tapping, static and
animated presentations, and alike aspects.
Development
Having decided on the design and overall functionality, we move further on to
development, which is divided into iterations. At this stage, the frontend and
backend development and all the integrations necessary are agreed upon.
At this stage, development for various platforms would become
time-consuming and pricey based on platform requirements and technology
stack preference by a client.
Also meet traffic requirements, such as when the number of people who
need to rent a car drastically increases. It is important to choose a hosting
provider ready for this kind of traffic growth.
We also make sure that the platform must be ready for high-load periods,
such as holiday and vacation seasons or big public events, when the number
12
of people who need to rent a car drastically increases. It is important to
choose a hosting provider ready for this kind of traffic growth.
QA and Testing
As soon as development is finished, whether it’s an MVP, which we often
advise our clients to start with, or a full-featured version, the stage of testing
follows. We check the developed products with the help of automated
systems, manually or both, depending on the project requirements and
contract.
Support
In the prevalent number of projects, we provide post support for the solution
developed and launched and continue to work on its improvement and
optimization. Each customer decides on the necessity of this stage, though
we advise signing post-support for every product since it presupposes further
development, maintenance, and also bugs fixing, stability checking,
infrastructure testing, monitoring, and updates.
In case the client wants to develop the next iteration of the created solution,
the cycle starts all the way round.
Development Team and Price
13
Platforms and Timeline
PLATFORMS TIMELINE
Leased Car Platform (Low Cost Cars) 1 Month
Leased Car Platform (Premium Cars)
Auto Body Shop Platform 1 Month
Total 1 Month
Team and Charges
● 2 backend developers working full time for 1 months x $5/h = $1600
● 1 front-end developer working for 1 months x $5/h = $800
● Final Total Amount = $2400.
Notes: Support and Maintenance for initial 6 months included in final
development amount.
14
Thank you.
