Toronto, Ontario — A new study published by Statistics Canada shows that while New Brunswick’s tourism industry is slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels of activity, the province’s rental car industry is struggling to keep up inventory.
By the end of 2022, New Brunswick’s rental car inventory was approaching 2,000 total vehicles, up more than 20 percent from 2021, but still short 31 percent of the inventory available in 2019.
The report points out that these figures aren’t especially shocking considering the shrinking of rental inventories in the years prior to 2019, showing that total rentals available between 2017 and 2019 declined by about 8.5 percent.
What is of note, however, is the appearance of car sharing services attempting to fill the gap in inventory left by traditional rental companies, particularly in urban centres on the East Coast.
The report also found that of the available rental vehicles in New Brunswick, 60.5 percent are scooped up by private business, leaving 34.5 percent behind for individuals and households, while government and foreign use represent the remainder.
Additionally, growing consumer demand for electric vehicles, evidenced by a nearly 10 percent uptick of such new vehicle registrations nationally in Q3 2022, is contributing to their increased prevalence in rental vehicle fleets.
