Oct. 23—A Hertz Rental Car will open on Nov. 1 with a counter located at Enid Woodring Regional Airport.
It will not be a corporate Hertz, as it is owned by Lewis Automotive Group, which has between 15-20 locations in Kansas, as well as a location in Stillwater.
Jenna Kelch, owner of the Enid location, said her family owns nine car dealerships, and got into the car rental business in 2019, and since then numerous locations have opened. She said leadership from the city of Enid and Woodring approached them about bringing a Hertz location to the airport, and she said she already had purchased the rights to Enid prior to that. There potentially could be another Hertz location to open in the city, but Kelch said there are no plans in place for that yet.
Kelch said her family's car dealerships and car rental locations are in areas that are tight-knit communities, and said the same qualities made Enid a natural place for them to seek another location.
"We are in a small community area and we're very family driven, and that's one thing that drew us to Enid. Enid's a smaller community, though it's not super small, but it's what we're used to, where some of these rural areas we don't feel like get as much attention as needed," Kelch said. "And we know it's something that with the insurance companies and just travel in general, it's much needed down there. And we've had a bunch of people from Stillwater tell us that Enid would be very nice because they need to come into Oklahoma City or Tulsa somewhere to get rental cars a lot of the times."
Hertz will offer everything from a compact car to rental vans, box trucks, passenger vans and midsize, small and large SUVs. Kelch said with this location not being corporately owned, it allows for a larger amount of cars that are available at a given time.
"The nice thing about us is we're not corporate, so we own all of our own fleet," Kelch said. "We have a fleet of about 700 in our group, so the nice thing is, just to start, we'll house about 20-30 down there. And the nice thing is, with owning car dealerships, we have access to being able to get more inventory if we ever need to at a given time."
Kelch said Hertz plans to be involved with the Enid community, as it is a goal to keep money local.
"We sponsor a lot of football teams, baseball teams, high school stuff," she said. "One thing that I really want to dive into is getting involved with the high schools, the body shops and insurance companies, all of those things down there. I would like to also get involved with different organizations down there that do donations and those things also."
Holubar is business reporter for the Enid News & Eagle.
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