Lotte Rentacar tops KS-SQI car rental category for 15th consecutive year

Lotte Rentacar, the car rental brand of Lotte Rental, topped the Korean Standard-Service Quality Index (KS-SQI) in the car rental category, completing a sweep of all three major domestic customer satisfaction surveys this year, the company announced Thursday.

The KS-SQI is a service quality evaluation model jointly developed by the Korean Standards Association and Seoul National University's Business Research Institute. Each year, the index surveys customers who have directly used products and services of domestic companies to select the top performer in each industry, assessing eight criteria: accuracy, expertise, sincerity, kindness, proactiveness, ease of use, appearance and social value. In this year's survey, Lotte Rentacar ranked first for the 15th consecutive year in mainland regions and the 14th consecutive year on Jeju.

The result gives Lotte Rentacar a grand slam in domestic customer satisfaction surveys for the year. The brand had earlier claimed first place in the car rental category for the 12th consecutive year in the National Customer Satisfaction Index (NCSI) survey in September, and for the 11th consecutive year in the Korea Customer Satisfaction Index (KCSI) survey the same month.

Lotte Rental offers services spanning the full range of automotive lifestyle needs, backed by what it describes as the only full mobility lineup in the country. Its new-car long-term rental service is divided into "BizCar" for corporate customers and "MyCar" for individual customers. The company also operates "MyCar Save," a long-term rental service for used vehicles returned after previous long-term contracts, available at competitive rates.

In August, Lotte Rental expanded its service so that long-term rental customers who had not enrolled in a maintenance plan could still receive repair support in the event of a vehicle breakdown. The expansion covers individual and sole-proprietor customers under MyCar and MyCar Save long-term rental contracts.

Short-term rental services are available at more than 330 branches, pickup zones and airport and KTX station outlets nationwide, including on Jeju. Customers can rent and return vehicles without time or location constraints through a mobile self-check-in feature that streamlines the process and a smart key box that enables unmanned rentals and returns around the clock.

The company has also made it easier to book short-term rentals abroad. In July, it entered the Japanese short-term car rental market, with the Korean headquarters handling reservations and payment systems while its Japanese subsidiary provides Korean-language customer support on the ground. Partner Orix Auto supplies the vehicles and overall rental operations infrastructure. In August, Lotte Rental signed a partnership with global car rental company Hertz, enabling vehicle reservations at 91 branches across 63 cities in eight countries with high demand from Korean travelers — the United States, Japan, Canada, Spain, France, Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

"Differentiated service that accompanies customers throughout every stage of their automotive lifestyle is the source of our brand competitiveness," a Lotte Rental official said. "We will continue to innovate in line with our vision of being the undisputed No. 1 player in the mobility industry."

Meanwhile, Lotte Rental has been expanding its customer touchpoints through various marketing activities, including recently adding Genesis's first hybrid model, the GV80 Hybrid, to its long-term rental lineup. The product allows customers on a four-year contract to return the vehicle after two years without an early-termination penalty, reducing the financial burden of long-term use of a high-end vehicle.