Today is a very special day. Exactly 20 years ago we rented our first vehicle in the UK. It was a Vauxhall Cavalier and was rented from our newly opened branch in Reading. Just two months earlier, in the summer of 1994, six of our colleagues made their way from the US ready to take on the task of establishing the brand here.

Since that first car was rented on September 23^rd 1994, we have grown into a nationally and internationally recognised brand and developed a UK network that has more than 90% of the population with ten miles of it.

Along the way, we have seen developments in technology, from the introduction of ECARS in 2004 to the adoption of handheld devices that allow us to serve our customers more efficiently.

We have developed new areas for our business, such as the creation of our UK Flex-E-Rent division in 2010, which will help us better support our customers’ needs for commercial vehicles. We have also developed our people to become leaders within the business and have established Enterprise as an employer of choice. It has been great to see our name on the Times Top 50 list for the last nine consecutive years, as well as to receive numerous awards for our diversity and recruitment initiatives.

Although we have been growing our UK business throughout the past 20 years, we have also supported the growth of the company internationally. From our European Headquarters in Egham, we now support a team of European franchise partners, who often turn to their UK counterparts for advice on how to develop those new markets.

Enterprise has come a long way in the past twenty years, but it has only been possible due to the dedication of all of our colleagues who have worked to build our brand into what it is today.

While many things have changed and our business has developed significantly since 1994, our core values of looking after our customers and employees have remained the same. It’s a philosophy that will also serve us well in the future.