Why do we run out of rental vehicles every summer?...

If any of my staff, or I, had a dollar for every time we heard this question at the breakfast table…we would have enough for a George Street night out! This year, we even resorted to sourcing our own "emergency stash" of rental cars. Talk about a wow factor when we pull that one out of the hat on a mid-summer, car-less morning!

You can predict the next, sad round of questions! "How do I get to Bonavista and the Matthew? To Trinity to attend the pageant? to Placentia to learn about resettlement? to Mistaken Point’ to view the world famous fossils? To see the icebergs off Twillingate? And the fjord at Gros Morne?" No need to go on – with our current transportation system, the absence of sufficient rental vehicles chokes rural tourism – not to mention making us collectively look quite disorganised! This is an important tourism issue! And it happens every year!

So, for the most altruistic of reasons, that we might each year get better than we were the year before, and on behalf of the guests this year who could not find a rental vehicle, let’s ask not only why does this happen, but what could we do to ensure it is more the exception than the rule?I am sending this question to my peers in the rental car business. I will also send it for comment to organizations which deal prominently with tourism - Destination St. John’s, the City of St. John’s tourism office, and those organizations working with rural tourism. I will copy the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation. Let’s see what they say . . . not to me . . . but to you! Cheers . . . Elaine