What’s the point of Carornocar?
Our aim is to look at various different cities from around the world, from the point of view of a visitor, and give suggestions as to whether or not a rental car would be a good idea for the trip.
Can you give me individual advice?
Sure – as long as we can show this to others, so if the request is via twitter or a comment on the site, we’ll publish an open reply.
Do you care whether or not users actually rent a car?
No. This site is built on the idea of ’some will, some won’t, so what’. If we were operating as a travel agent, then we would know that some people would book a holiday, and that others wouldn’t. It is also quite common for people to go to a travel agent, as for a load of advice, and then rush off to the internet to try and save a few pounds on their trip. As this project is entirely web based, it doesn’t matter to us if people browse the site and then don’t make a booking.
Yeah, but surely, you really want people to make a booking?
If I just wanted everyone who came here to make a booking, I’d build a price comparison website, or a car hire guide. But neither would interest me enough to want to build them further, so they would never grow into anything worthwhile. Also, any operation like this would be just another ‘me-too’ website – we’d be fighting with everyone else to chase the same people in a very competitive market.
Why would you tell someone not to rent a car?
For simple reasons – we would be providing a service for them by giving useful advice. And we would hope they would tell other people about the site, which in turn would lead to future revenue for us.
How will you balance between places where you suggest renting a car, and those you don’t?
I have thought for a long time about what kind of ratio split there might be between cities where I say ‘you don’t need a car’, and those where I suggest getting one. Initially, the ratio was going to be around 70% against – but this ultimately made the site a bit pointless. If I said people didn’t need a car for most places they visited, I’d just be stating the obvious – yes, it is true that you can get around most cities in Europe without renting a car. But what about places to see outside the cities? And if I’m not much of a driver myself, how can I make any advice I give appeal to people who do drive?
So I’m going for a 50:50 split, and including some places which might seem like an obvious ‘no’ as ‘yesses’, just to stir things up – starting with Copenhagen!
Do you drive yourself?
At the moment, I don’t use a car on a day to day basis, but I can borrow a car when I need to. I haven’t hired a car on any of my recent trips, but have done so plenty of times in the past. My real passion is for trains, and I am a keen cyclist, but I don’t believe in lecturing people about how they should get around. Every method of transport has its place, and I’ve been running a flight finding website for 7 years, so this is a chance to branch out into how to get around by land.
I could just build a website about urban transport, listing metro maps etc, but these are already available on a city-by-city basis. It is only by providing a comparison between driving conditions and public transport that we can help people make the best of their trip by getting around in whatever mode suits them.
Why do you include so few cities?
This site is brand new (as of November 2009), so please bear with me. I’m putting up a few sample pages to test the idea, and get some idea about revenue projections so I can throw together a business plan.
I’ve just got back from Scandinavia, so I’m going to roll out the following cities first – Billund (YES), Copenhagen (YES), Stockholm (NO), Helsinki (NO)
I will then gradually roll out pages, according to where I think our advice would be most useful. But initially, I will be sticking to places I have actually visited.