Despite the massive fall in demand for car rental in the second half of last year, Europcar still managed to grow its revenue by 2.2%.

A reduction in the number of vehicles it has in its fleet saw it maintain utilisation at over 70%, despite the fall in demand.

However, the company’s full-year 2008 results, which have just been published, show that much of the revenue growth came from its acquisition of its master franchisee in Asia-Pacific, which remains the fastest-growing car rental market in the world.

This contributed €89 million (£80 million) to the company’s total revenue for 2008.

Along with its competitors, Europcar was hit by the sharp decline in demand for rental in the second half of last year.

“Europcar’s response was a rapid reduction of the fleet, beyond the normal seasonal pattern,” explained Salvatore Catania, chief executive officer of Europcar Groupe.

“Despite fierce competition, the company remained disciplined on pricing and succeeded in increasing its average revenue per day slightly in 2008, including in the fourth quarter.”

The gains however were not enough to compensate for the combined effect of tough market conditions in the last four months of 2008 and higher fleet holding costs across the year.

Adjusted operating margin for the year therefore declined by 2.2 percentage points from 2007 to 11.9%.

Catania said: “Europcar performed better than the other major players in our industry. We are nonetheless responding to unprecedented challenges to our industry with measures of far-reaching scope and ambition. At the same time, we will maintain our pricing discipline.
We are determined to emerge from the downturn as an even stronger company.”

In September, Europcar also concluded its alliance with Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the market leader in North America.

Together, the two constitute the world’s largest car rental network with 13,000 locations running a fleet of 1.2 million vehicles.