Looking for a new way to get home from Raleigh-Durham International Airport? travelers now have a new option in the form of car-sharing app Turo.
The Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority Board on Thursday entered into an agreement with Turo Inc., a peer-to-peer vehicle sharing company that will allow it to operate at RDU. A briefing memo compared Turo to AirBnB (Nasdaq: ABNB) “only with cars instead of homes.”
It’s an online platform already used at airports like Charlotte Douglas International that allows for vehicle sharing transactions between personal vehicle owners and consumers. Under its deal with RDU, Turo will be allowed to operate in the airport parking facilities. In exchange, Turo users will pay parking fees and the company will pay RDU 10 percent of its gross receipts linked to users at the airport.
A spokesperson at Charlotte Douglas International said CLT has a similar setup with Turo, where it gets 10 percent of receipts. In its fiscal 2023, CLT reported $500,000 from peer-to-peer operators, most of which was from Turo.
At Asheville Regional Airport, Turo operates in designated paid parking areas – not on the front curb of the airport – and pays out 10 percent of gross revenue conducted on the property. According to an airport spokesperson, through September of this year, Asheville had made about $100,000 from the arrangement.
Turo, which is headquartered in San Francisco, also operates at Wilmington International Airport and Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro. It has a presence at major airports across the country, including Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, Orlando International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Turo’s main competition comes from both ride-share services and legacy car rental firms such as Hertz and Enterprise. RDU recently expanded its rental car options to include SIXT, the fourth rental car company to operate at the airport.
Turo's tenure at other airports has not been without controversy. In 2018, the firm was sued by the city of San Francisco. The city wanted it to pay fees required to legally operate atthe airport – but Turo claimed it shouldn’t be subject to the same regulations as car rental companies.
Turo lost the case with a judge ruling the company shouldn’t be treated differently than traditional car rental firms.
Turo, which has raised about $500 million since 2009, initially filed to go public last year, but recently restarted its IPO plans. Its last known valuation, according to PitchBook, was $1.2 billion in 2019.
