== History: ==


Argus Car Hire is an internet based car rental company that first went online in 1996. The company mushroomed out of a small family run business which was set up in 1959. It is headquartered in the south side suburb of Rathgar in Dublin, Ireland and trades with 450 car rental suppliers at 11,000 online locations throughout the globe.

Innovations:

In order to keep up with the increasingly competitive online car rental market, Argus Car Hire made a number of innovative technological advancements since its launch. In 2000, the company unveiled a WAP phone interface. Looking to broaden its market, in 2002 it designed a search engine to cater for locally approved car rental companies at off Airport locations. Not long afterwards, in 2003, the company developed a search engine that would allow customers to search for all classes of cars and most suppliers from one click of its search and booking engine.

CarTrawler:

In 2004, Argus Car Hire branched into the search engine technology industry, establishing CarTrawler, a global distributions company focused on business-to-business reservations technology. By 2006, the company had launched the first OTA XML Distribution System, employing a multiple supplier direct connect strategy so that competitive pricing and availability were optimised.

In 2007, CarTrawler, announced its completion of the first fully functional Ajax based booking engine that could be completely integrated into any partner’s existing booking engine or site. This was seen as a way of maximising cross selling and ancillary revenue. Meanwhile, the company’s Direct Connect technology, as implemented in Ajax booking engines provided customers with realtime, booking, pricing and availability, which would be guaranteed on the car suppliers own inventory system up to one hour before pick-up time.

CarTrawler continues to develop business-to-business car rental solutions and has recently added a number of international airlines to its portfolio.

External links

Irish Independent article

Ernst and Young recognition

CarTrawler