Europcar wins top honours at World Travel Awards

Europcar was named for the second time the World’s Leading Green Transport Solution Company for the second year running at the 2010 World Travel Awards Grand Final Ceremony this month. The company was also elected World’s Leading Car Hire Company for the fourth year in a row.

The World Travel Awards are the “Oscars” of the travel industry, with 187,000 industry professionals voting for the best company in each category in seven regions of the world.

Upon receiving the award, Europcar Groupe Global Marketing Director Jehan de Thé said, “We are truly proud to receive these awards once again. They represent industry recognition of our approach to environmental protection. They also confirm our role as a pioneer in raising awareness among our customers, in enhancing our service offering and in expanding our fleet of environmentally friendly vehicles.”

Europcar’s environmentally friendly fleet includes vehicles which emit less than 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer, as well as models equipped with alternative engines (hybrid or electric) or engines that are compatible with biofuels, bio ethanol and natural gas. To further expand this nature of its fleet, Europcar recently signed a partnership agreement with PSA to launch two new-generation electric vehicles on the car rental market in 2011: the Peugeot iON and Citroen C-Zero. This partnership follows the pre-order of 500 Renault electric vehicles for delivery in Europe’s largest cities in the 3rd quarter of 2011.

Europcar is giving maximum visibility to its environmentally friendly cars and encourages consumers to choose a “greener” car when making reservations. In addition to adding a section dedicated to eco-friendly cars on its web site, the Company provides specific information about the CO2 emissions of all models in its rental car fleet.

To go even further in this area, Europcar is launching car2go service in Hamburg, Germany, in the spring of 2011. A unique concept in urban mobility, car2go will offer a fleet of 300 Smart Fortwo vehicles, which customers will be able to find and rent – without a reservation—around Hamburg, thanks to leading edge telematics. The service concept is environmentally friendly, notably because the car2go Smarts are equipped with a high energy efficiency engine and a solar panel on the roof.

A car rental industry pioneer in environmental protection, Europcar opened its first “environmental” agency in Paris in 1999. The Group was also the first European company to develop an Environmental Charter, which was certified by Bureau Veritas in 2008.