Decoding Competitor Surcharges: How Granular Fee Scraping Uncovered an 18% Pricing Advantage

Our client, a national car rental company, faced a frustrating paradox. Their internal analysis showed their advertised daily rates were among the most competitive in the market. Yet, their online conversion rates were stagnating, and customer feedback often labeled them as 'surprisingly expensive.' They were winning the initial click on aggregator sites but losing the final booking. They knew their competitors were doing something different, but they lacked the granular data to prove it. Their manual process of checking competitor websites was slow, inconsistent, and rarely made it past the initial price display to the final, fee-laden checkout page.

This is where our team at Iceberg Data came in. The client's core problem wasn't the base price; it was the total cost of rental . We proposed a deep-dive competitive intelligence project focused not just on the daily rate, but on deconstructing the entire fee and surcharge structure of their top five competitors across twenty key airport and metropolitan locations.

Our approach was to simulate the complete customer journey. We configured our data collection agents to go far beyond simple price scraping. These agents navigated the complex, multi-page booking funnels of each target website. They selected specific rental dates, including high-demand weekends and holidays. They chose different vehicle classes, from 'Economy' to 'SUV'. Crucially, they proceeded all the way to the final payment summary page—the point where most customers abandon their carts—to capture every single line item. We scraped mandatory taxes, 'Concession Recovery Fees,' 'Vehicle License Fees,' and all optional add-ons like GPS units, child seats, and additional driver fees.

The initial data stream was a torrent of disparate information. One competitor called an airport fee a 'Terminal Surcharge,' while another called it an 'Airport Concession Fee.' To make sense of it all, we used our NLP-driven normalization engine to categorize every fee into a master list. This created a true apples-to-apples comparison for the first time.

The results were illuminating. We uncovered the 'trick' their primary competitor was using. This rival advertised a daily rate that was consistently $5-$10 cheaper, luring customers deep into the booking funnel. However, our data showed they then added a 'Customer Facility Charge' and a 'Vehicle Licensing Recovery Fee' that were, on average, 200% higher than our client's equivalent fees. The final price was often higher than our client's, but the initial low price created a powerful psychological anchor.

Armed with this intelligence, our client didn't engage in a race to the bottom. Instead, they executed a brilliant strategic pivot. They used our dashboard, which visualized the complete price breakdown for every competitor in every key market, to make surgical adjustments. They identified that their own child seat rental fee was priced far below market rate—a hidden loss leader. They adjusted it upwards slightly, bringing in new revenue. Conversely, they saw that a competitor's 'Additional Driver' fee was a major point of friction for customers. Our client slashed their own additional driver fee and launched a 'Family-Friendly Travel' marketing campaign around it.

The most impactful change was launching a new 'Transparent Pricing Guarantee.' They used our data to confidently state that their total price, including all mandatory fees, was consistently lower than their key competitors for comparable rentals. This messaging, backed by hard data, rebuilt customer trust. The results were immediate and profound. Online booking conversion rates increased by 25% within three months. The strategic recalibration of their ancillary fees led to a 12% increase in average revenue per rental. Because these adjustments were made to high-margin items, the overall profit margin on those bookings jumped by an incredible 18% . By looking beyond the sticker price, our client turned a competitive vulnerability into a powerful and profitable advantage.