A few months ago in Barcelona, some cars were renting for up to 1,000 euros per day. The solar eclipse created exceptional demand, but the price increases only came late. For the teams, room for maneuver was extremely limited.
During the same event elsewhere in Europe, another car rental operator found itself completely overbooked six months in advance. The total solar eclipse in early August 2026 had simply not been identified as an event to monitor.
“We achieved high revenue, but with overbooking... in Barcelona, every company had to stop selling.”
Jose Hernandez, CEO of Malco, shares this story -which happened to one of his competitors- with his WeYield revenue manager a few days later. What stands out in this story isn't the headline 1,000-euro price tag—it’s everything around it. On one side, last-minute demand soaking up all available capacity; on the other, eight months of forward visibility, a clear demand signal as early as mid-February, and yet an agency caught off guard at the last moment, forced to cancel bookings and relocate customers urgently.
It is precisely this paradox that led the WeYield team to formalize an event management methodology - named SCOPE - built on dozens of real-world examples like these with car rental operators around the globe. Not advanced theory, but a practical framework born from the very questions field teams ask week after week.
An Event Isn't What You Think It Is
The first, very common mistake is confusing a “high-profile event” with a “profitable event.” Adrian Treacy, revenue manager at WeYield and founder of Rental Nexus, regularly reminds clients of this using major sporting events as an example:
“A big event isn’t necessarily a big event for car rental.”
The Olympics, a World Cup, or a major concert impact hotels, airlines, and restaurants, but rarely car rentals because visitors primarily rely on public transit. Conversely, an eclipse, a volcanic eruption, a massive wave event like Nazaré, or a simple seasonal spike can represent a much more profitable demand surge—provided you know how to spot it.
Morgane Pogarsky (Head of Customer Success at WeYield) illustrates what it means to properly read a demand signal—not just knowing when demand will peak, but when people actually book:
“They can identify demand peaks, but also better understand the booking window... we might be making decisions for the last week of the year while customers are actually booking in the final two weeks.”
It's a nuance that changes everything: an event identified early on the calendar whose actual bookings occur at the last minute cannot be managed the same way as an event where customers lock in cars three months ahead.
“Where Do You Want to Go?” — The Step Everyone Skips
Once an event is identified, the temptation is to jump straight to pricing. That is precisely the trap WeYield's SCOPE method aims to fix: before adjusting anything, you must know where you want to land. Laurie Guenin from the WeYield team sums up this step with a simple analogy:
“Without a destination, a taxi driver doesn't know where to drive. Without an objective, neither does a revenue management strategy.”
This step often reveals internal friction no one had explicitly stated. At Malco, during the slow month of September, discussion revolved around a classic dilemma: should prices be lowered to drive occupancy, at the risk of damaging brand image?
“If you have a booking at 200 euros and start selling at 100 euros, it hurts Malco’s quality perception,”
explains Jose Hernandez. This trade-off between volume and brand image, or price and utilization, cannot be solved by an algorithm. It is resolved upfront by defining a clear target: are we trying to maximize RPD (daily rate), or are we chasing volume at all costs? At AutoUnion Portugal Iconiq, Bruno Farola outlines this strategy clearly when setting seasonal targets:
“What the system does is that once you reach 20% utilization, it starts raising prices fairly quickly... because our objective is to maximize RPD, not volume.”
Fleet: The Real Core of the Battle
If there is one common thread across every client coaching session, it is this: fleet planning matters just as much as pricing—and often more.
At AutoUnion, Bruno Farola faced a textbook scenario. He was waiting for 50 new vehicles to absorb demand in Faro, where sales were already blocked across the board. The cars didn't arrive due to a manufacturer technical delay. As a result, he had to manage weeks of stop-sells while trying not to lose real booking momentum. Adrian Treacy asked the crucial question:
“The challenge now is that if you add those extra vehicles without taking new bookings, reopening sales late will negatively impact your utilization rate.”
In short, anticipating fleet requirements isn't just about “having enough cars.” It’s about knowing when to onboard them—neither too early (paying for sitting cars) nor too late (missing the peak). On this topic, the exchange between Bruno Farola and colleague Maribel Ruiz is a great lesson: rather than bringing in 150 cars all at once, they decided to stagger deliveries across May, avoiding paying for a full month of idle fleet before peak season truly began.
“I think it’s better to start in May, but gradually,” suggests Maribel. “One batch one week, another the next week, reaching full capacity by early June.”
This is an operational trade-off very few pricing tools address—because it’s not a rate problem, but a fleet timing challenge combined with rate management.
During the Event: The Ultimate Test
This is arguably the most revealing phase, where strategy meets real-life execution—and where conflicting market signals surface.
At AutoUnion (Portugal), Joana Santos describes a market she bluntly calls “cold” at the end of summer, despite optimistic forecasts:
“I don't think we will fill up late August... Even with a lower RPD than last year, we aren't generating the booking volume we need.”
Faced with this signal, the natural reflex would be to slash prices heavily. But Adrian Treacy digs deeper by cross-referencing flight traffic data with reservation trends:
“Even if airlines offered more capacity, fewer people are actually arriving in Lisbon.”
This combined view—airline capacity vs. actual passenger arrivals and existing booking pickup—prevents panic reactions. The pricing strategy wasn't flawed; the total market size was simply smaller that year. Two different diagnoses, two completely different responses.
Without that on-the-ground vigilance, a spike in cancellations could have been misread as a negative market shift, when it was merely test reservations generated by a broker system check. It serves as a great reminder: data must be clean and verified by someone who knows the operations.
What to Keep, What to Change
Once the event concludes, the most overlooked —yet most valuable long-term— phase takes place: the debrief. It’s not just about “how much money we made,” but “what should we repeat, and what should we do differently next time?”
This phase yields the clearest testimonials regarding the value of the methodology itself. Patricio Sanchez, newly appointed revenue manager at Costa Car (Costa Rica), highlights how this discipline impacts daily work:
“What I liked best was the level of calculation available and the quality of visualization—percentages, year-over-year comparisons, forecasts... These are powerful tools to continuously improve.”
At Malco, Jose Hernandez shares a similar conclusion after months of guidance—noting a shift in mindset, not just tool usage:
“I know things I didn’t know before, and above all, I see how our approach to checking and managing prices keeps evolving... It’s a major shift that takes time to absorb; it doesn't happen overnight.”
At AutoUnion, Bruno Farola takes it a step further: he uses the methodology as leverage during negotiations with his international franchisor to modernize pricing updates across the Spanish and Portuguese markets.
“I’m probably the only master franchisee pushing for this. But they listen to us because we are likely their largest market.”
Why a Methodology Matters More Than Just an Algorithm
The takeaway across all these cases isn't that automated dynamic pricing is useless—on the contrary, many clients rely on automated tools daily to tweak rates around event windows. But an algorithm answers one question (“what price should we set today?”). It doesn't answer the core strategic question: “which events deserve our focus, and what are we truly trying to achieve?”
That is the core question WeYield's SCOPE methodology structures into five straightforward steps:
- Select the right event (S for Set the Event)
- Choose a realistic goal (C for Choose the Target)
- Outline roles and actions (O for Outline the Strategy)
- Pivot and perform during the event (P for Pivot and Perform)
- Evaluate and refine for the next iteration (E for Evaluate)
Simple on paper, yet demanding to execute consistently week after week amid daily operational distractions.
That is why Morgane Pogarsky (WeYield) stresses in every training session that process matters more than technology:
“A poorly managed event isn't just a wrong rate. It can be misaligned fleet delivery, a team working toward conflicting goals, or a demand signal spotted too late to capture. SCOPE doesn't replace the revenue manager's expertise—it provides the framework so you are never caught off guard by what you saw coming.”
Photo credit Jongsun Lee on Unsplash
