Tech-driven industry and traveler trends are shaping the future of mobility

August 9, 2023

3 min read

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Julie Shainock

Global Leader, Travel & Transportation Industry - Microsoft

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The rental car industry will thrive by using Mobility as a Service (MaaS) ecosystem in the future. Why?

The rental car industry will thrive by using the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) ecosystem in the future. Why? The MaaS industry is sitting at the intersection of travel and technology innovation, reflecting trends, from hyper-personalization and sustainability to strategic partnerships and artificial intelligence. It is an emerging market with scale,tipped by Gartner to be worth $372 billion by 2026, up from $42 billion in 2018.

Technology and its relationship with data underpins everything. It is the bridge for emerging travel and industry trends to become mainstream. Part of my role at Microsoft, often via strategic partnerships with domain experts like Amadeus, is to figure out how we can help businesses to move beyond legacy systems to the cloud and also to monetize the new opportunities.

In the traditional car rental space, legacy systems have served their purpose. But, as we have seen in other verticals, transitioning to new cloud-based technologies can open up fresh opportunities and help to change processes which better reflect evolving traveler expectations.

And it’s not just the car rental industry which needs to consider its relationship with its existing tech stack. If we loop back to MaaS, which gives customers the choice and freedom to search, shop and book different transportation options within the same app, then this is only possible when all participants are on the cloud.

Similarly, a cloud-based platform – secure, open, connectable – will ensure that car rentals remain a pivotal part of the leisure and corporate travel experience.

The opportunities for firms which embrace the cloud and MaaS are potentially great. The cloud has already opened the door for many startups to develop a presence in the market quickly, and to disrupt the status quo with cloud-native business models which tap into and satisfy emerging travel and industry trends.

Personalization is nothing new, but the data capabilities of the cloud – acquisition, validation, sharing, analysis and commercialization – are allowing some early adopters in the car rental space to talk in terms of hyper-personalization. Data is the foundation for almost everything we do and everything we can offer to the industries we work with.

Today’s consumers have high digital expectations – know me, value me, serve me over my channel of choice. In the car rental industry, we should know what temperature the air-con should be set to for a traveler, how to preset the radio, even the preferred brand. This helps with advocacy and loyalty.

Data should also allow providers to understand the context of each and every traveler’s trip. For example, when I go on a business trip, I use ride hailing and taxis, but when I’m on leisure I prefer to rent a car. The different contexts need to be determined to deliver on the promise of personalization.

Data can also help operationally, and cloud-based solutions are being developed to help with, for example, predictive maintenance and fleet optimization. Bringing data to the core of decision making can help car rental and mobility firms deploy staff more effectively, allowing them to do more with less.

As technology continues to evolve, it is important that innovation is driven by the traveler and that new products and services align with evolving expectations. Data intelligence is already supporting many use cases, and there are some paradigm-shifting initiatives under development and close to productization. Almost everything is in place for car rental firms to do away with not only queues at the airport but also the physical counter itself. The rental process can be entirely digitalized when the data is centralized rather than siloed and can be shared in a holistic manner at every touchpoint.

Our joint research with Amadeus –“Ahead of the Curve: How Technology is Driving the Future of the Rental Car Industry” presents a compelling argument for car rental companies to transition their business to new technologies and embrace the emerging MaaS ecosystem, with examples of what cloud-native disruptors are offering travelers today.Click here to download the report.

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