RelayRides Takes A page From Airbnb, Rebrands As Turo

sure, it’s possible you’ll use Airbnb because it is the most cost effective choice within the city where you are traveling. however Airbnb has taken great efforts to brand itself as an possibility for finding unique trip options (1,four hundred castles and counting!) and connecting with locals.

RelayRides, a car-renting platform for particular person automotive owners, is now taking a web page from the identical advertising plan. On Tuesday, the company announced that, along with $47 million in collection C funding, it is changing the corporate’s identify to Turo. A made-up phrase, the title is meant to spark associations with works like “tourism,” “turbo,” and “adventure.”

Turo will work to tell apart itself from the standard automobile condo expertise, much as Airbnb has differentiated itself from resorts. “as a substitute of renting the prevalent fleet vehicle,” CEO Andre Haddad informed fast company, “[our customers] are all for renting one of the unique automobiles we’ve got available on the market. they’re additionally concerned about connecting with the owner of the car and organising a different kind of rapport with town that they’re travelling.”

Andrew Mok, the corporate’s VP of promoting and analytics, endured the imaginative and prescient: “when you’re sharing your automotive on Turo,” he says, “you’re sharing yourself, you’re sharing the story of your car, you’re permitting any individual else to create a brand new story with your car.”

When RelayRides launched 5 years ago, it had no center of attention on tourism. the company began targeting vacationers when it piloted the technique to search through airport in 2013, and launched a supply choice in 2014 (the owner of the auto drives it to a decide-up point).

Now, the startup has at least one car to be had in over 2,500 cities and about 300 airports. “Turo” is most likely a greater title than “RelayRides” to search out out whether the will for distinctive trip experiences extends to automobile leases (plus it is shorter, more uncomplicated to claim, and translates higher internationally). but if the trap of adventure does not hook you, the price tag may: the corporate estimates that its rentals are on average 35% more cost effective than a condo automobile company’s automobiles.