Tourists visiting South Africa for the FIFA World Cup did not use car hire services as often as predicted.

Two of the country’s leading car rental operators, McCarthy and Imperial Holdings, said that expectations were not met primarily due to the significant usage of visitors of local public transport networks.

Brand Pretorius, the CEO for McCarthy, said his group had expanded its fleet by up to 15 per cent in anticipation of a rush on rentals for the World Cup. Imperial, meanwhile, had added an extra 2,000 vehicles in the lead up to the tournament. However, due to low demand and poor advance reservations, McCarthy was forced to undertake a last-minute defleeting before the competition kick-off.

Pretorius said that hire vehicles had been done away with in favour of public transport systems such as Gautrain and the Bus Rapid Transport System, but also conceded that many tourists may not have been willing to risk driving on unfamiliar roads or even in right-hand-drive cars. He added that the rental market had been dominated by Gauteng, while the remainder of the country only boomed on match days. The weeks preceding the event were surprisingly low, although walk-in business did improve during the tournament itself.

Osman Arbee, the chairman for Imperial Holding’s’ rental division, said his group had also experienced a similarly slack period of demand, with Durban and Cape Town being especially slow. Johannesburg was the one city to experience high demand, although anticipated travel to other tourist attractions such as Kruger National Park were well shy of predictions.