(Riverton, WY) – The Riverton City Council approved a lease agreement last week allowing the national peer-to-peer vehicle sharing company Turo Inc. to officially offer rental car pick-up and drop-off at Central Wyoming Regional Airport.
Turo already operates in Fremont County, Public Works Director Brendan Thoman said – and throughout Wyoming, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia – offering customers “additional options for renting cars that may not be available through traditional car rental agencies.”
“It’s kind of Uber meets Enterprise Rental Car,” he explained. “(It) allows a pre-screened car owner, referred to as a host, to offer their cars and trucks for rent to the public through the Turo booking network.”
Hosts who want to offer vehicles for rent have to submit to a background check and register with Turo, which “sets guidelines for reliability, maintenance, and cleanliness of the vehicle,” Thoman noted.
From there, he said hosts can schedule rentals, set pickup locations, and organize the handoff of the vehicle keys.
10 percent fee
The lease agreement the council approved last week charges Turo a 10 percent fee for use of the airport parking lot.
“This is a pass-through fee that is charged to rental car customers in addition to their rental agreement with the company,” Thoman explained. “So if the city does enter into this agreement, Turo would deposit into a city account 10 percent of the gross revenue which comes from the operator for this area.”
Currently, the city doesn’t receive any revenue when Turo hosts use the airport parking lot, Councilmember Mike Bailey pointed out, expressing support for the rental agreement.
“I think we need to get our appropriate fee,” he said. “I want to make sure we’re getting our fee for doing that and not letting them fly by night under the radar.”
Mayor Tim Hancock agreed, commending Turo for “trying to do the right thing and saying, ‘We’re doing business up here. We’re trying to make it so that it’s a legit thing that we can kind of advertise.’”
One of those advertisements will appear on the airport webpage, where the lease agreement requires the city to list Turo as an available rental car booking option – an accommodation that Councilmember Karen Johnson opposed.
“If they’re asking to be listed on our webpage … our airport represents them and the business that’s being conducted there – and I don’t feel that they’re a reputable company with good reviews that would reflect (well on) the city of Riverton,” she said.
Turo is not Better Business Bureau accredited, and it has some “really negative reviews,” Johnson explained, sharing that 2,466 complaints have been filed against the company over the last three years – only 176 of which were resolved.
“I’m totally for getting a reliable, full-time company up there – I think that’s very needed for the airport,” Johnson said. “But I feel strongly (that) this isn’t the appropriate one.”
Instead of entering into a lease agreement with Turo for a 10 percent fee, Johnson suggested the city could implement parking fees at the airport – but Hancock didn’t like that idea.
“I love the fact that we don’t do that,” he said.
He also pushed back on the idea that listing Turo in the airport webpage constitutes an endorsement.
“To me, it feels just more like saying, ‘This is something that’s available,” he said.
Councilmember Eric Carr agreed, adding that, if Turo is “that bad … the free market will take care of (it).”
The city also has the ability to “revoke” any “bad hosts,” Thoman noted.
But Johnson said “it’s not just host interactions” that can cause problems with Turo – it’s a lack of support from the company itself.
“Once they get you signed up, once they get you where they want you, then there’s absolutely no response from their company if you have issues,” she said. “It’s a problem if we can’t reach out to them and fix issues. If we have somebody coming up and complaining about one thing or another and we can’t reach out to (Turo), what does that say for our service at the airport that we’re providing people?”
To address that concern, Councilmember Karla Borders said the city could post a disclaimer on the airport website indicating that the list of rental car providers is not an endorsement – then let the free market and the traveling public “determine if this works or not.”
“Anyone who is looking to rent a vehicle really should do due diligence in finding out how this company runs,” Borders said. “And that’s out of the city’s control. But I do think (we’re) responsible to try to claim some of the revenue, rather than just have it be like Door Dash.”
The council voted 5-1 to approve the lease agreement, with Johnson voting “no.”
For more information, call the City of Riverton at (307) 856-2227.