> The difference from car rental vs a hotel room or an airplane seat is the fact the the company relies on the previous occupant to return the car on time, which often does not happen. If a person wants to extend a hotel reservation but the hotel is entirely sold out, they say "sorry, too bad." With a rental car people simply don't always bring them back, they pay the extra day fee or whatever, but the car simply isn't there to give to you.
If you don't want to vacate your plane seat or your hotel room, you don't just get to say you'll pay for another night or another flight. Why then is this allowed practice for car rentals? The late return fee should be proportionately high so as to very strongly dissuade this kind of behavior.
> Why then is this allowed practice for car rentals?
Because the car is a physical object whose entire purpose is for you to take it far away from the rental office.
> The late return fee should be proportionately high
Are you sure you want to advocate for large corporations to add additional, punitive fees to consumers? One day you might need to return a car late, you know, if someone in your party gets sick or something.
They already do charge a lot extra, still, some people pay it. The other part is there is no fixed time where everything switches over. Hotels have a fixed check-out time for everybody, doesn't matter if you checked in at 3pm the or 11pm. Cars work on a 24-hour schedule, if you rented the car in the evening, you can keep it till the evening. Sometimes people return them early, if they have a flight to catch or whatever, some people keep the car as long as possible. Usually this is managed just fine, but sure, occasionally, demand exceeds supply and the car isn't immediately available. Flights get delayed too, sometimes, perhaps you've noticed.
If you don't want to vacate your plane seat or your hotel room, you don't just get to say you'll pay for another night or another flight. Why then is this allowed practice for car rentals? The late return fee should be proportionately high so as to very strongly dissuade this kind of behavior.