The U.S. car rental market is stabilizing. That doesn’t mean smooth.
The U.S. car rental market held its ground in 2025, but the path to get there was anything but clean. Phocuswright's newly released U.S. Car Rental Market Brief 2026 breaks down exactly what pressured the segment last year, where the recovery is taking shape and what structural shifts are quietly reshaping how cars get rented in America. International demand left a mark. Airport locations generate the bulk of revenue for the major operators, which made 2025's inbound travel slump particularly painful. The U.S. saw a sharp decline in international visitors, with Canadian arrivals falling dramatically. For an industry where two-thirds of revenue is airport-derived, that kind of exposure isn't an abstraction — it shows up directly in rental day volumes and pricing power.
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