Fear of coronavirus urged Romanians without a car to rent cars to go on holidays around the country and even for one or two-day visits to relatives or friends, while Romanian companies have been forced to take into account new client segments.

"After the lifting of travel restrictions inside the country, the Romanian rent-a-car companies, accustomed to renting cars mostly to expats, Romanians in the diaspora or companies, were forced to consider new segments of clients as of lately: some Romanians who, until now, used public transport (train, bus, coach and even hitchhiking) to go on holidays in Romania, for a few days or a week, or on one or two-day visits to relatives also living in Romania, to parents or to friends from other cities now want to rent a car," say the representatives of Enterprise Rent-a-Car Romania.

These are people who do not have cars or have old cars, without ITP, RCA etc. and who wanted or want to travel within the country, once the travel restrictions were lifted.

"There is also another category, of young corporate people with a conscious attitude of environmental protection, who travel to work by bicycle or scooter and who traveled around the country by bus or train. Some of them now feel the need to protect themselves and not expose themselves to the risk of being infected while traveling with strangers," said Mihai Fertig, general manager of Enterprise Rent-a-Car Romania.

Although rent-a-car companies generally do not rent cars for just one day, in order to meet this new demand, Enterprise has launched a special service called "#primuldrum" [first travel], through which cars can be rented for a shorter period of time, even for a few hours, with a rate starting at 7 euros per day for one car.

During this period, car reservations began to appear for July and August, but so far in a small number. Due to the lack of predictability, customers tend to decide to rent the car shortly before the trip, only when they can be sure that the trip will actually take place.

Touring Rent Auto, the rental company from the Eurolines group owned by Dragos Anastasiu, has been operating since 2001, and since 2014 it has represented the Enterprise Rent-A-Car brand, the largest in the world. In Romania, Enterprise owns a fleet of 800 cars. Enterprise Rent-A-Car is an American company inaugurated in 1957, being present in 100 countries with over 10,000 offices. AGERPRES (RO - author: Mariana Nica, editor: Nicoleta Gherasi, EN - author: Cristina Zaharia, editor: Adina Panaitescu)