Self-drive car rental establishments worry about 'losing Tet' due to the epidemic

Normally, Tet is a busy time for businesses.car rentalHowever, with the current unpredictable Covid-19 epidemic situation, self-drive car rental establishments are very worried that the number of customers will decrease.

In addition, many car rental establishments have been fully booked from December 25 to January 6, fearing that their contracts will be canceled, because customers living far away will not be able to return home for Tet, and customers in the province are reluctant to travel.

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Luan - owner of a self-drive car rental facility in Vinh city shared that during the recent holidays such as April 30 and National Day September 2, there were few customers renting cars, and it was thought that this year's Tet holiday would be a bit better; however, the outbreak of the epidemic has caused the demand for car rental to continue to decline. Mr. Luan's facility has 30 cars, most of which are new cars worth from 500 million to 1.2 billion VND, so if there are no customers, it will be very difficult.

Although they have spent a lot of money repairing and buying new cars, many businesses are worried that due to the outbreak, many customers will cancel their car rental contracts. Photo: Tien Dong

Some self-drive car rental establishments even before Tet had been busy repairing and purchasing new cars to serve customers' Tet car rental needs, but the outbreak of the epidemic again made the establishments surprised and worried. Many establishments kept the Tet rental price as usual, from 600,000 VND to 1 million VND/day, depending on the car model, but the number of customers depositing still did not increase.

"Normally, on the days before Tet, there would be no more empty cars, customers would take their cars to visit distant relatives, go back to their hometowns to visit graves, but now there are still long lines of cars at home" - a car rental business owner sighed.

Many car rental agencies are impatient as Tet approaches but cars are still waiting in line at home. Photo: Tien Dong

There are even establishments that, although they have been accepting deposits since the 10th lunar month, even though the deposit is only 200,000 - 300,000 VND, in the past few days, many customers have called to cancel their car reservations because they cannot return home for Tet. Although the deposit is not worth much, customers are happy to lose their deposits, but this makes the establishments even more worried.

In addition to the sudden decrease in the number of customers due to the epidemic, the most worrying thing for self-driving car rental establishments during Tet is that customers who go out drinking alcohol will get into accidents and get injured.fine. Because usually when the customer returns the car, only after a while will the car owner know whether there is a fine notice or not, at that time, asking for the fine from the customer is no different than "letting the chicken out to chase". Not to mention, taking advantage of renting a car to go out for Tet, many people have taken the car to trade in prohibited goods or pawned it at pawn shops in other provinces, although it can be handled, it will be very time-consuming for businesses.