1.
People with disabilities are unable to easily rent a wheel chair van when traveling.
2.
The who: People that are confined to a wheelchair,
specifically disabled persons
The what: They are unable to easily rent a wheel chair van
when traveling
The why: Because Enterprise and Hertz provide limited to no
wheel chair vans available to rent and there is no convenient way for someone
in need of a wheel chair van to rent one as easily as someone can rent a car
from Enterprise at the airport
3. Testing the who: Various feedback was given and the general consensus is that the target demographic that would need these wheelchair vans are business men with disabilities or people and children with disabilities in general. Generally, people that have an injury would not demand this product as much as the others
Testing the what: There is limited to no wheel chair vans available at the major car rental businesses and after the interviews the conclusion was that it has to do with the supply and demand or the cost and demand. Meaning, not enough people with the need and simply too expensive to offer if there is not enough people with the need. Now, this has to do with every airport in general, there is definitely a need in major airports, specifically Orlando International being the number one vacation capital.
Testing the why: This is the place where a lot of people differed. I simply blamed the current car rental businesses that are up and running where as my prospective customers blamed the overall need. A few shot down the idea saying that if there was a need for this, a rent a wheel chair van would have already been up and running while others thought that there is a need for this it is just overlooked.
Jayme,
ReplyDeleteI think your first interview, Amy Atkins, makes a great point about more people with disabilities may travel if there were more wheelchair accessible vans. This could be a Catch-22 situation where vans are not being provided due to the paucity of disabled people traveling which does not provide a positive cost benefit analysis. On the other side disabled people may not be traveling due to the lack of convenience. I think there is groundbreaking opportunity here for someone to provide access and increase the amount of travelers not to mention the benefit of helping people who are already at a physical disadvantage as opposed to everyone else in life.
After listening to the interviews and reading your thoughts, it seems sense to me that if any business were to carry/offer wheelchair vans, it would be the airports themselves. Outside car rental companies may not see enough of a demand to warrant to cost of a wheelchair van, but as you mentioned, major airports absolutely have plenty of wheelchair-bound persons passing through that may have a need to rent a car. I am wondering, since airports have obviously not implemented wheelchair van rentals, what the concrete roadblocks have been that stopped Enterprise/Hertz from entering this market. You may even be able to talk to a local Enterprise manager and pick his/her brain on the matter, to get a better grasp on your roadblocks to entry. I think this is an awesome service that you can offer, keep picking for more information!
ReplyDeleteJayme, I think that you ask great questions in your interviews to help determine what the best conclusion might be. I agree with Sarah that if there was to be any place to carry wheelchair vans the airport would be the best place. First I believe most rental car places are not directly at the airport so it would be a hassle for the person in the wheel chair to be transported to the rental car place. Also I believe they would just get a lot more accommodations by just renting the van at the airport. I really enjoyed reading your post!
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