CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1Background of the study
A car rental or car hire agency is a company that rents automobiles for short period for a fee whether for few hours, days or week. It is an elaborate form of a rental shop, often organized with numerous local branches (which allow a user to return a vehicle at different location). A car rental services are primarily located near airports or busy city
Car rental agencies primarily serve people who have a car that is temporarily out of reach or out of service, for example travellers who are out of town or owners of damaged or destroyed vehicles who awaiting repair or insurance compensation.
Because of variety of sizes of vehicles, car rental agencies may also serve the self-moving industry needs by renting vans or trucks, and in certain markets other types of vehicles such as motorcycles or scooters may also be offered (Mohd, 2012).
Car rental companies operate by purchasing or leasing number of fleet vehicles and renting them to their customers for a fee. Rental of fleets of vehicles can be structured in several ways – they can be owned out rightly ( ‘risk vehicles’ because the car rental operator is taking a risk on how much the vehicle will be sold for when it is removed from service), they can be leased, or they can be owned under a guaranteed buy-back program arranged directly through manufacturer financial arm (Walter, 2012).
The Management Information System (MIS) as a computer-based system makes information available to users with similar needs,managers used the output information. Studies shown that MIS canbe used to manage car rental services, it is expected to accelerate sales, security as well as archiving customers information for better and safer services to make it easier when required at any time.
The web application of management information system provide and support customers reservations, assist management in knowing rental car inventory at a specified time, assist in processing transactions between branches of car rental services, transportation transaction processing, which should support satisfactory service to customers and support the company’s operational processes. Web-based car rental information systems will increases company customers’ base, and help promoting company services (Bayu, 2011).