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Rent That Car Through Your TV Screen

4 July 2000

Avis Goes Digital With ntl

    BRACKNELL, Berkshire--July 4, 2000--Avis Europe plc, the leading car rental company in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, today announced that it has signed an agreement with NTL, a British telecommunications company, to enable subscribers to book car rental through their TV screens.

    Through NTL's interactive platforms, viewers will be able to find information on Avis car rental, to make a reservation and to buy an Avis ex-rental car. Avis aims to extend this offering in due course to include online quotes and bookings for cars worldwide.

    This new service is part of Avis' commitment to making car rental easier by increasing customers' access to electronic distribution channels. The service gives ntl subscribers, over multiple platforms, access to car rentals via interactive TV.

    This latest agreement builds on Avis' presence on interactive television and Avis plans to extend this type of service to other cable TV based channels in the UK and Germany.

    Avis Chief Executive, Mark McCafferty, comments: "Integrating our content into ntl's interactive Travel Channel forms part of our strategy to lead the development of e-commerce for car rental. Making use of this new and exciting media allows us to reach customers at a time and place convenient to them. We are looking at ways of making rentals with Avis as easy and quick as possible and our agreement with ntl allows us to do just that."

    -- Avis Europe is the leading car rental company across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It serves more than seven million customers a year through a network of over 2,700 locations in over 112 countries.

    -- NTL uses state-of-the-art technology to deliver telephone, tv, internet and interactive services to UK homes and businesses with 22 million homes watching ITYV, CH4 and CH5; 5.6 million of those homes are within its fibre-optic broadband network. ntl helped pioneer digital tv and is involved in digital terrestrial, cable and satellite and launched the UK's first interactive service in March 1999.