Revving up auto Europe

In corporate America, they call it entrepreneurialism, innovation, and progress.

Along the harbor in Portland, ME, where Auto Europe is headquartered, they’ve got another name for it: Yankee ingenuity.

It’s what Dwight Sholes, Auto Europe’s vice president for market research and development, says is the driving force behind a redesigned Web site that will be launched this week.

“We’re very lean and mean and we do things differently,” says Sholes, who has spent the last nine months planning an upgrade to Auto Europe’s Internet presence. “Our philosophy is that if we can do this in-house, we should.”

He did. With a staff of only five part-timers (chosen from about 150 employees in its main office) Sholes developed a new home page that will soon offer real-time bookings, destination information, and a vastly accelerated download time from earlier versions.

The company is a 44-year-old wholesale travel agency specializing in European destinations. The previous Auto Europe page, Sholes says, “was designed by the technology guys.” It lacked the clarity and intuition to turn shoppers into buyers. “There was a reasonable amount of information on the old site, but it wasn’t organized in a way that would lead people through the selection process and make a sale. The information was becoming unwieldy,” he says.

Auto Europe completed the overhaul in record time, although users will have to wait for real-time bookings until year’s end. As Sholes puts it, “if we’d hired consultants to do the job-or probably if we were any other company-it would have taken us twice as long.”

All told, the front-to-back facelift of the cyberspace storefront took nine weeks, which included the installation of a database from which customers can view inventory and prices, and rigging a one-of-a-kind e-mail verification process for bookings.

It is perhaps that system, more than any other of the new site’s bells and whistles, that best exemplifies “Yankee ingenuity,” according to Sholes. Renting a car in Europe isn’t as straightforward as it is in the States. “There are an awful lot of terms and conditions,” he says. Certain cars are prohibited from being driven into certain countries; a Mercedes, for example, isn’t allowed to cross the border into Eastern Europe.

Auto Europe had developed a system that would fax booking verifications, along with the cumbersome fine print, to clients. But turning that fax into an e-mail, which was one of Sholes directives for the new site, proved to be a challenge. “We couldn’t get into the fax system because we didn’t own the code,” he recalls.

No matter. Within an afternoon, his team figured out how to scan the fax and turn it into an e-mail, thus avoiding a major programming endeavor. Along with the innovations, Auto Europe has adopted a more proactive approach to its Web site. No longer content to sit on the same storefront for months at a time, Sholes says the page now takes a more “evolutionary” approach. It will reflect the organic nature of cyberspace by growing and changing along with customer needs.

“This will probably be the last major redesign of the Auto Europe site,” he notes. “After this, it’s going to be smaller additions and changes.” Such as? In June, a section called “Travel Nuts,” featuring puzzles, games and contests, will debut. This might appear to be of little strategic value, but it will help Auto Europe build its brand name online, which is one of the site’s goals.

In coming weeks, the company also is expected to finalize a deal with Frommer’s to swap access to its travel content for discounted car rentals. Auto Europe also is trying to spiff up its business travel content, although it hasn’t made any agreements yet.

It’s too soon to tell if the upgraded Auto Europe site is worth the effort. It is almost certainly worth the expense. Because it was developed in-house, the price tag hardly made a dent in the company’s overall information technology budget. But the project is also a noteworthy case study in how one interactive travel company managed online obsolescence and effectively immunized itself against ever having to deal with the same problem again.

Call it ingenuity or call it innovation, but Auto Europe’s aggressive approach to its Web site will probably serve it well in the long run-even if it never rolls out a “new” Internet presence again.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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