Our Story — Rentrals.com
Rentrals.com  ·  Est. 2011

Our
Story

Every great company begins with a single moment of frustration — a broken promise, an unfair bill, a dream of doing something better. This is ours.

Scroll to begin
2009
Chapter I 01 / 06

A traveller in a
foreign city, betrayed.

It was a sweltering August in Istanbul. Our founder — let’s call him Alex — had just landed after a red-eye flight from London, bleary-eyed and buzzing with the kind of quiet excitement that only a solo trip can produce. He had planned everything carefully: the rooftop hotel, the bazaars, the winding coastal drives. All he needed now was the car he’d booked two weeks earlier.

The rental desk smelled of industrial cleaner and broken promises. He slid the confirmation across the counter. The clerk barely glanced at it before starting to type — and then came the numbers. The deposit had nearly doubled. There were insurance add-ons he hadn’t agreed to. A “city surcharge” buried on page four of a contract written in legal English so dense it might as well have been ancient Greek.

“I stood there doing the maths on my phone, watching my carefully planned holiday budget evaporate — and I thought: this can’t be how travel is supposed to feel.”

— Alex, Founder of Rentrals.com

He paid. He always did — because what choice did you have? You were already there, bags at your feet, the open road calling. But something shifted in him that day, quietly and permanently, the way only injustice can shift a person.

He drove those Turkish coastal roads with the windows down and the music loud — and the whole time, somewhere beneath the joy, a question was forming: “What if there was a better way?” Not just for him. For everyone.

Chapter II 02 / 06

The night he
decided to build something.

Two years passed. Alex travelled constantly — Greece, Georgia, Cyprus, Montenegro — and the same story played out in a dozen languages, at a dozen counters. The industry hadn’t changed. The hidden fees were a feature, not a bug. The big chains had perfected the art of the bait-and-switch, and travellers had simply accepted it as the cost of going somewhere new.

Then one November evening in 2010, sitting at a kitchen table in East London with a half-cold cup of tea and a laptop covered in sticky notes, Alex started writing. Not a business plan — not yet. Just a list. Everything that was wrong. Everything he wished existed.

“No hidden fees” was first on the list. “Plain-language contracts” was second. Then: “connect travellers with local owners who actually care.” He wrote for three hours. The tea went cold. The city outside went quiet.

When he finally closed the laptop, he wasn’t tired. He was certain.

He spent the next six months calling rental companies across Turkey and Greece — not corporations, but the small ones. The family-owned businesses where the owner answered the phone personally, where the cars were maintained with pride, where a handshake still meant something. And almost universally, they shared the same frustration from the other side of the counter: they were invisible. Buried beneath the search results of global chains with million-dollar marketing budgets.

“These people had decades of expertise and genuine passion. They just needed someone to introduce them to the world. I wanted to be that bridge.”

— Alex, reflecting on those early conversations
2011
Year founded
0+
Countries
0+
Local partners
0K+
Customers / year
Chapter III 03 / 06

Fourteen years.
One honest road.

A decade and a half of building trust, one journey at a time.

The Beginning

Rentrals.com goes live

From a one-bedroom flat in London, Alex launches Rentrals.com with 12 partner companies across Turkey and Greece. The first booking arrives three days later — a family from Amsterdam renting a small Fiat for a road trip through the Aegean coast. Alex personally calls the rental owner to confirm. He will do this for every single booking that first year.

2011
2013
Growing Roots

Cyprus, Georgia & the Caucasus

Word spreads not through advertising but through real reviews from real travellers. A blog post from a Scandinavian couple who drove through Georgia sends a wave of bookings. Partners in Cyprus and the Caucasus reach out wanting to be listed. Alex visits every single one before they go live — a practice that has never changed to this day.

The Promise

The Zero Hidden Fees Guarantee

After collecting thousands of customer reviews and hearing consistently that “I was worried about being surprised at the counter,” Alex formalises the Zero Hidden Fees policy. Every price on the platform must be fully all-inclusive — taxes, insurance, delivery, everything. Partners who can’t meet this standard are removed. Several are. It’s painful. It’s the right thing to do.

2015
2017
Going Global

Southeast Asia, Morocco & beyond

The platform expands to Thailand, Bali, Morocco, and Sri Lanka. But growth is never chased at the expense of quality. Every new country requires a physical visit. In Chiang Mai, Alex sits across from a family who has been renting cars for 30 years — their children now help run the business. This is who Rentrals.com is really for.

Tested by Fire

The pandemic years — standing by our partners

When the world stops travelling, Rentrals.com faces an existential test. Revenue falls to near zero. But there are 400+ partner families who depend on the platform. Alex negotiates reduced fees, maintains every listing, and personally emails each partner monthly. Not a single partner is dropped during the crisis. When travel returns, they come back stronger — and more loyal — than ever.

2020
2023
New Heights

30,000 customers. 500+ partners. 55 countries.

What started with 12 partners and one man’s anger at an airport rental counter is now a global community. 30,000 customers rent through Rentrals.com every year. A 4.9-star rating, earned review by review. And still — still — every new partner is visited in person before going live. Some principles don’t scale. That’s precisely what makes them valuable.

Still Writing

The story isn’t finished

Today, Rentrals.com continues to grow — not because of venture capital or ad spend, but because every traveller who rents an honest car tells a friend. The mission hasn’t changed since that sticky-note list in 2010: transparent pricing, real people, and the kind of service that makes you feel looked after rather than processed. We’re just getting started.

Today
Chapter IV 04 / 06

Not just a
platform. A mission.

There is a type of business the world is slowly losing. Not because they are bad — quite the opposite. They are exceptional. Family-owned, community-rooted, generation-spanning. But they have no marketing department, no SEO budget, no venture funding. They survive on reputation alone. And in the age of algorithms, reputation isn’t always enough.

This is the injustice that drives every decision at Rentrals.com. The father in Tbilisi who has maintained his fleet of Toyotas with military precision for twenty years. The mother and daughter in Rhodes who personally greet every customer at the port. The retired engineer in Porto who converted his passion for cars into a small rental business that has never received a single complaint.

These businesses are invisible to the algorithm but unforgettable to anyone who has actually experienced them. Rentrals.com exists to make them visible — to put a small family business from Bali on equal footing with a multinational chain.

When you rent through us, you are not funding a faceless corporation’s quarterly report. You are paying a local business owner who will personally make sure your holiday goes well — because their reputation depends on it.

“In 14 years, I’ve never once regretted choosing quality over growth. Every partner we’ve turned down for not meeting our standards has made the platform stronger. Trust is slow to build and instant to destroy — we choose slow.”

— Alex, Founder
Chapter V 05 / 06

The voices
behind the platform.

Real customers. Real partners. Real words — never filtered, never scripted.

E
Evgenia B.
Customer · Georgia

“The car was delivered on time and the owner called me personally to explain everything. Zero hidden charges. I genuinely wept a little — I’d been burned so many times before. I’ll never use a big chain again.”

M
Mikhail S.
Customer · Greece

“Full insurance for half the price of any major chain. We drove across four countries — Greece, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria — and the partner was reachable every single day. That kind of peace of mind is priceless.”

N
Nikos P.
Partner · Crete, Greece

“My father started this business in 1987. For years I watched big chains take all the tourist customers while we struggled for visibility. Rentrals.com changed that. Now our customers return every summer — and they bring their friends.”

L
Lyudmila I.
Customer · Georgia

“The transparency genuinely surprised me. Every charge was listed before I paid. The car arrived cleaner than anything I’ve had from major companies. It felt like borrowing a car from a trusted friend — not a corporation.”

A
Arjun K.
Partner · Bali, Indonesia

“Before Rentrals, I had five cars and barely enough bookings. Now I have fifteen cars and a waiting list. But what matters more is the quality of customers — people who respect the car, respect the island, and want a real experience.”

R
Roman N.
Customer · Georgia

“Booked a Toyota Prado for Tbilisi. Clean, on time, delivered to the airport. The agent called me an hour before arrival to check I’d landed safely. A corporation has never done that for me. A human did. That is the Rentrals difference.”

Chapter VI 06 / 06

What we
stand for.

These aren’t marketing values. They are the commitments Alex wrote down at that kitchen table in 2010 — and they haven’t changed since.

🔍

Radical honesty

Every fee, every clause, every insurance option is spelled out before you pay. No surprises at the counter. No small print designed to confuse. If we can’t explain something in plain language, we don’t offer it.

🛡️

Your money,
protected

15–20% to reserve. The rest paid on-site. Full refund if anything goes wrong on our end. Your financial security is not negotiable.

4.9★

Average rating across all partners, based on verified post-rental reviews.

98%

Customer satisfaction score — earned, not manufactured.

🌍

Every booking is a vote for local business

When you rent through Rentrals.com, the money goes to a local entrepreneur — not a shareholder. It flows into local communities, local families, and local economies. In 55+ countries, we are quietly building a different kind of travel industry: one where the small guys win.

The road ahead

Your journey
starts here.

Somewhere right now, a rental owner is polishing a car they are proud of, hoping someone will choose them over the faceless chain. Be that person. Travel honestly. Drive local.

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