Leading car hire company, Europcar, aimed to make the journey easier for families arriving and departing at its Heathrow airport location recently, as it anticipated high volumes of customers.

As a high volume of customers were expected to either pick up or drop off vehicles on Friday 1st July, Europcar laid on a children’s entertainer and magician - ‘Professor Palmermoff’ - who kept the hoards of youngsters entertained with tricks and balloon shapes whilst their parents sorted out the details of their hire cars.  There were ice lollies and complementary activity packs also on hand.  And when there weren’t many children in the queues, ‘Professor Palmermoff’ entertained the adults too!

“The key to our ‘Peak Days Plan’ at Heathrow was to give a helping hand to parents trying to cope with youngsters whilst dealing with the stresses of foreign travel”, explained Ken McCall, Managing Director, Europcar Group UK.  “We could see that the day was going to be particularly demanding in terms of the volumes of Europcar customers scheduled to arrive and depart from Heathrow, with kids and luggage in tow – so we wanted to take as much stress out of the experience as possible. “

Complimentary bottles of water were also provided for the adults.  There were increased numbers of customer facing staff both on the counters and out in the car park to provide support and advice to customers.  And all Managers within the rental reception and car park wore high visibility jackets to make them easy to spot for the customers.

Holidaymakers arriving and departing from Heathrow were also even more certain of a swift transfer to and from the departure hall with Europcar.  With 22 courtesy coaches, there’s a transfer to the Heathrow terminals every 7 minutes, making Europcar the fastest car hire company at the airport.

“The day was a tremendous success, with many Mums and Dads commenting on how relieved they were to see their children well occupied and entertained, whilst they dealt with the car hire paperwork”, concluded Ken McCall.  “It’s an approach we plan to apply again, not just at Heathrow but other airports where we know we are going to have a big influx of customers on one day.”

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