Hertz Rolls Out an Faster Airport Exit So You Don't Hail An Uber

Once upon a time, your transportation options upon touching down at a U.S. airport involved hailing a taxi, renting a car, or taking a shuttle to your hotel. Those options still exist, but business travellers and tourists can now waltz out the door and into a number of app-based ride-hailing services and a growing list, depending on location, of short-term, app-based car rental services that don’t carry any of the usual names seen at the rental line.

Hertz clearly felt that omitting a couple of minutes from the rental counter-to-destination trip might help it stay ahead of those pesky mobility upstarts. Enter the magic of biometrics.

Announced today, Hertz Fast Lane (officially, Hertz Fast Lane Powered by Clear) is now in operation at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, ahead of a 2019 rollout at 40 airports, including JFK, LAX, and SFO. The rental agency claims the new tech will allow customers to get on the road faster.

Available to Gold Plus Rewards members, the service relies on biometrics (fingerprints, iris scans, and facial scans) for its checkout system. To use it, you first need a Clear account with your biometric data contained within, linked to your Gold Plus Rewards account. Grab a car, and your physical identity will be confirmed via facial scan an automated kiosk at the exit gate.

“Prior to the use of Clear, we have an exit gate process that takes two minutes on average,” said Jodi Allen, chief marketing officer at Hertz, told Bloomberg. “As a result of putting Clear in place we’re able to get our customers out the exit gate in 30 seconds or less, which is a 75 percent improvement. On Monday mornings in Atlanta where there are surge customers, making sure we can get people out significantly faster makes everybody’s experience better.”

Hertz claims Clear is free to use if you’re a rewards member, and there’s discounts available for Clear’s time-saving airport service.

While it doesn’t erase the existence of Uber, Lyft, Maven, ZipCar, or Turo (et al), smoothing out the traditional rental experience is one way of keeping customers who now have all the choice in the world.

[Image: Hertz]