So what do you think about this? In the US we offer a product called Avis Connect, a Wi-Fi unit that you can rent from selected locations for $10.95 a day. Now I am not trying to encourage mindless drivers to surf the net while driving at high speeds on one of America’s many, many freeways. That would be, well, not clever. And it is not the point. What it does do is give you the flexibility to pull over and check your emails at your convenience. Plus it has the added bonus of being portable so you can take the unit into your hotel room and browse the internet to your heart’s content.
It is not something we currently offer in the UK so I would be really interested in your feedback on this product. Is this something that would interest you or is it not worth our time taking a look at? If no-one posts a comment then I’ll take that as a no!
On the subject of Wi-Fi you may be interested to know that our location at Heathrow has a Wi-Fi hotspot. So if you happen to be renting from there sometime soon then please feel free to grab a chair and surf away!
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I’m an Avis Preferred customer who lives in the US but I travel to the UK often. I have never chosen to use Avis Connect in the US because US business traveller hotels generally have free or cheap WiFi, plus I get email and Google Maps through my phone. *BUT* the situation is different in the UK. In the UK I’ve always found hotel WiFi access to be shockingly expensive, and sometimes not available at all. So, I think there is probably a better case to be made for Avis Connect in the UK than in the US. In the UK, it would be great if people working at Avis rental desks explained that “if you use this box, you save the cost of hotel WiFi”. Because, I think that’s really the sweet spot for this in the UK, not the “you can access the internet from the car” aspect (which many people can do anyway using their phone).
cheers,
Mark.
Hi Mark,
tell me about it! It’s free everytime I travel back to France. British hotels must make a fortune out of wi-fi.
How much would you be ready to pay for such a product?
Xavier
I think this would ba an excellant new product to offer our customers, i agree the cost of wifi in hotels is too expensive and if the have a free hotspot it is generally limited to the lobby areas giving a lack of privacy.
Oxford have a high proportion of tourists in the summer season and i feel it would be a very attractive and useful addition to our services.
2007/11/29 dear avis you have an impressive history of hard work and innovative thinking. have you considered combining all that in a mobil device that goes on three wheels and charges on housecurrent when plugged in overnight?
i have seen one such device already on the market but empty of wi-fi and other high tech components. you can google images of corbinsparrow or sparrow_ev or nmg from myers motors. my heritage traces back to the ford company when ray and evangeline dahlinger worked for mister ford.
Hi Jean,
The website says the company that built them is now brankupt!? Are they authorised to drive in the UK?
I like the quirky design!
Xavier
Everything in the UK is a rip-off, and the government wonder why the number of tourists visiting the UK from the US has reduced considerably in the past 12-24 months.
p.s. Xavier, you need to turn the permalinks feature on Wordpress to make the web URLs more search engine friendly.
Sorry for being a geek
Jean, have you heard of the G-Wiz car? It’s not on 3 wheels but it is an electric car that can be charged by plugging into the mains. I’ve seen a few of them around London.
Darren, all I can say is £1.09 a litre to fill my car over the weekend. Incredible!
Thanks for the tip on the permalinks. Are you talking about how the URL appears when you click on the Permalink, where it appears as a number instead of showing the title of the blog post. I think it’s a great idea but do you think it will mess up pre-existing inbound links to the blog which are using the existing URL format? That’s my main concern but if it isn’t an issue we’ll change it!
PS – thanks for the mention on your blog yesterday. Keep up the good work, you write some great stuff.
Hi Rob. Yes, the url would be http://www.wetryharder.co.uk/avis-offer-wifi rather than http://www.wetryharder.co.uk/?p=250
Much more SEO friendly but as you mention it would cause problems on inbound links.
You can put in what the techies call a ‘mod rewrite’ so that the link to the current URL would change to the new URL without any link loss.
It might be worth looking into and discussing with someone whose specialises in SEO.
Thanks for taking the time to provide advice on this Darren. We used our agency, Web Liquid, to help us develop the blog, so we’ll ask them to take a look into it for us!
Hi Darren,
I think we’re using Wordpress actually (Rob feel free to hit me if I’m mistaken) so it should be fairly easy.
We’re looking at a bunch of new features for next year but hush hush we wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise!
Not everything is a rip off, look at car hire
We have offered daily rentals in the UK as cheap as two tickets to the movie theatre (or arguibly one in London) quite often this year.
I see your point though.
UK is an expensive country to live in but we shouldn’t under estimate the impact of the exchange rates changes ($ and €) on the travel industry.
With the Pounds at $2.065 everything is going to seem expensive to our american friends in the UK and in Europe!
No problem Rob.
Xavier, good point about the exchange rate,and whilst it’s great for us Brit’s going to the US, it’s meant the UK is much more expensive for US visitors.
I don’t drive so don’t have many experiences with car hire, which is probably why I’ve not ranted much about it on the blog!
Looking forward to the new features. I have a few suggestions for plugins that might be useful to you, if interested drop me a email via my blog.
Best,
Darren
Thanks Darren. I’ll get Rob to drop you an email as he is putting together a list of requirements.
this is a really interesting development – but i am wondering how it works technically
Can you please send me some information
There is always the question of pricing- as innovators AVIS can charge for a while but when competitors offer a similar product you may need to revise pricing or offer it as a value added service and include it in the price
hope this helps
Thank you for the feedback Dimitrios.
Autonet are the supplier of this product and they do have some limited technical information on their website which might give you what you want: http://www.autonetmobile.com/wp/.
If you need anything else then let me know and I’ll contact my colleague in the US for more information.
Rob
Hey there. Doug Moeller, CTO from Autonet Mobile here. Basically, the In-Car router that we are providing Avis uses the cellular data networks for the backhaul and provides a local WiFi hotspot that the users can access just like any other hotspot.
For the version that we have with in the Avis U.S. deployment we are using CDMA networks, but we can also support GSM or HSDPA networks when we deploy internationaly.
The core piece of our technology is how we maintain connectivity seamlessly for the vehicle when it’s motion. So, it’s completely transparent to the user as you move between towers, networks, etc.
Feel free to contact me if your interested in more details.
-DOug
A very clever idea, moreso for overseas visitors to US. Most motels I have stayed in have not had WiFi and so at £5 per day it’s a good idea.
Others writers say it would be better if this was available in the UK but again most business type hotels will have WiFi, and if they charge it’s generally £5 to £8 for 24 hrs use.
Wi-fi huh? Whats going to happen when Wi-Max is rolled out this year? 300rd range to to miles of range from one router. The motorways in the UK would be the place to be for a good signal I guess? Maybe AVIS needs to take a different approach on this matter. One size doesn’t necessarily fit all (if management have their say, they’ll can have a darn good try I guess).
Shamraz
Thank you for the advice Shamraz. I have to admit I do not know a lot about Wi-Max! The wi-fi units are something that is still being considered but yet to be rolled out in the UK. I’ll forward your feedback on to the Product Development team who perhaps understand the technology better that I do!
Great idea, accessing the internet from UK hotels costs a fortune. I would hire it if the price wasn’t too prohibitive.