December has seen hired car businesses go into overdrive with full bookings leading up to Christmas and the New Year.
Regional product manager at Courtesy Garage Ltd, Samuel Gaston, said the demand resembled the Crop Over period where cars are often unavailable and potential clients had to be turned away.
“We have the peak periods like Crop Over and Christmas time. What happens a lot around the Christmas time is that people come late and last-minute trying to get a car and they’re in trouble. By the time you get to the week of Christmas, it would be very, very difficult for you to find a car because everybody already established the positions.
“We have people that would have booked with us this year, already book for next year. You have a whole heap of people coming from overseas for Crop Over and from the time they hand in their keys, they have their dates planned out,” Gaston said.
The season was equally successful for car rental company VCR Inc.
“For us business was, as usual, fully booked for last year and this year as well. This is one of our busiest seasons, regardless. At this moment, we still have persons calling us for vehicles, but we are booked up and, unfortunately, we don’t have anything to provide them with,” a spokesperson told the DAILY NATION.
Car rental and insurance broker Jeremy Pilgrim said owners ought to be grateful for the business of the peak periods given that the industry has become saturated in recent years.
“If the year is slow, I don’t think anybody could pretty much complain around this time, especially if it didn’t go to plan throughout the year because right now, there are tons of hired cars on the road. That is something that I have noticed, not just as a rental provider but as somebody who is in the insurance industry for 20 years.
“I am one of the persons responsible for insuring and putting a lot of vehicles on the road myself. So, I know for a fact that there’s a lot of rentals and people are crying out, stating that they can’t get the kind of money that they were getting previously because the market might be a little saturated. So it’s just time for people to give thanks and see if they can capitalise as much as they can,” he explained.
Proprietor of Bajan Car Rentals Raymond Cummins also emphasised the importance of the high season given the economics of registering the vehicle and maintaining a hired car service.
“The way it works in our economy, there are many bits and pieces that come together to make it so you can never have enough for the high season. When you have the low season, you still have to pay for the cars when they’re parked . . . . Some of what you made from the high season is going to carry that, as well as pay for different things such as maintenance in the lower times when you don’t have that cash flow,” he said.
Cummins said the cost of acquiring a permit for a hired car was in the range of $2 500 with an additional $1 000 for first registration. Licensing a vehicle is $100, plus $300 for inspection and road tax per annum.
“So you’re looking in the ballpark of $5 000 for every one car you want to add on. So if you’re looking to grow, it’s a very difficult thing to do,” he said.
The proprietor made the case for hired car services to receive the same concessions afforded to the tourist industry, noting the significant contribution they add to the tourist experience, especially in peak seasons.
“We are not even considered but when you think of a tourist package, you think of tourists coming to the country. You’ve got to have beds for their heads, yes, but in order for the country to receive its money, for them to walk around and take in the things that is Barbados and spend the money, they need to be mobile. “We are not even considered part of the tourism sector; we fall under transport like a bus. So we don’t get any concessions or get any considerations or eases in any way, but the same things apply. You have to apply for a permit, you have to purchase the permit, you’ve got to pay to insure the car as a hired car . . . . All in all, it is not a low overhead company by any stretch of imagination,” he said.
