GREENVILLE, Wis. (NBC 26) -- As people start to feel more comfortable traveling this summer, airports are seeing a sharp increase in fliers.
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But With heavy tourism expected to Northeast Wisconsin in the next few months, some rental car companies are seeing a shortage in vehicles.
"We've been hearing that there is a rental car shortage and that prices have been skyrocketing," Appleton Airport Marketing Coordinator Hollie Raab said.
Travelers around the region and the nation are looking for ways to get around.
"It's [travel] just kind of exploded over the past couple months," Raab said. "And even looking back at March, we were back to 80 percent of our numbers from 2019. ... Obviously, that has a big part in why there is a rental car shortage right now."
A manager at National Car Rental at the Appleton Airport says she is already seeing bookings for July. But delays in vehicle production are posing a problem for local companies.
"We feel like it's gonna be a big summer and are expecting a big increase in travelers this summer," Raab said.
Come July, National says it expects a five-percent increase in rental bookings, especially with summer events like EAA Airventure, which Dick Knapinski says brought nearly 640,000 people to Oshkosh two years ago.
"Airventure is a week-long celebration of everything that flies," Knapinski, the EAA Director of Communications, said. "I like to call it aviation's family reunion."
But Knapinski says there are other methods for tourists to get around in the coming months.
"Worst case scenario, we may see carpooling," he said. "You may see people getting together to share a ride. We've seen people use limo services and things like that to get down to the grounds."
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If travelers can't drive themselves, Knapinski says taxis and Ubers will probably be busy when EAA Airventure comes to town.
"We're looking at a half-million [people] or more here in 2021," Knapinski said. "There are a lot of factors still two months before opening day, so a lot of things go into that."
That's almost a 20-percent projected drop from 2019. But as health and travel policies continue to evolve, a lot can change between now and when the planes fly in Oshkosh this summer.
