Finalrentals start-up that moved from Dubai to Gdansk sums up 2021
Finalrentals, the start-up with the ambition to digitally revolutionize the car rental market, has had a successful year. The relocation of the company’s headquarters to Gdansk aroused great interest, as usually companies tend to go in the opposite direction. Can Finalrentals become an ambassador of Tricity as an example of successful foreign start-up investment in Poland?
Finalrentals with a record of new locations
Finalrentals’ history dates back to 2016, since then the company has been laboriously adding new locations to its service availability map. Pre-pandemic 2019 was the record year so far, then managed to include 44 new locations. We had to wait two years for a new record. As you can easily guess, 2020 was a dramatically bad year for almost all travel-related segments. 2021 has allowed Finalrentals to catch wind in their sails again, however.
The company added a record 55 locations, indeed beating the previous best result of 2019.
4 new geographical regions appear
The company also boasts the opening of four brand new geographical areas. Each of them is of great interest in terms of the future of travel, both strictly tourism and business.
The first of them is Miami. Florida seems to be one of the destinations selected as a mecca for winter warm-weather travel. Many airlines, m.in. Polish LOT has ambitions to make a lasting mark on this market. TAP Portugal offers excellent prices from Poland (but also from Berlin) to Miami. One should also remember the traditionally strong in this direction big aviation groups like AF/KLM or Lufthansa Group. Growing availability of air connections allows to be optimistic about the growth in the area of car rentals, certainly Finalrentals is betting on it as well.
The second destination is Saudi Arabia, a country that is expecting a real tourist and business boom in the coming years. Project Arabia 2030 including m.in. A modern luxury airport and Red Sea resorts will change the face of this country. Undoubtedly, tourism in this direction will experience a boom.
Finally Malta, leader of short city breaks with long tourist season. Here also the availability of cheap flights is the key to the popularity of this destination. Poles are already among the top nations coming to the island.
Finally, Saint Martin, a true exotic, known mainly for its fascinating photos of airplanes approaching landings. Demand for exotics is one of the trends of the pandemic time and it will not burn out soon. It is evident that Finalrentals has carefully selected its new locations. The future potential of each of them is definitely above average.
There are new partners in distribution
Finalrentals relies on fully digital distribution and needs to be assisted by global/regional partners. Some of them are m.in. Rent Cars and VIP Cars, with which cooperation agreements were signed in the past year. Care has also been taken to enrich the content, here too new providers have been included in the super app m.In. Nationala and Enterprise.
This is certainly not the end of the product enhancements in the pursuit of a truly global offering.
There is also an element of sustainability
The company has also noticed trends in sustainability and carbon footprint management, its communication clearly emphasizes the full transition away from paper. The entire booking process at Finalrentals is fully paper less. Taking care of the green aspect of the business is extremely important and will be one of the important parameters influencing the attractiveness of the offer in the future. We are curious to see the development of an innovative start-up that decided to choose Tri-City for its new home. Let’s hope that the business success will allow other companies to consider a similar move, maybe we will see travel tech Silicon Valley in Tri-City, if only on a regional scale. Examples of Barcelona and Berlin show that success attracts like a magnet.
