Predicting Car Rental Prices: A Comparative Analysis of Machine Learning Models

In modern times, people predominantly use personal vehicles as a means of transportation, and, as this trend has developed, services that enable consumers to rent vehicles instead of buying their own have emerged. These services have grown into an industry, and the demand for predicting rental prices has arisen with the number of consumers. This study addresses the challenge in accurately predicting rental prices using big data with numerous features, and presents the experiments conducted and results obtained by applying various machine learning (ML) algorithms to enhance the prediction accuracy. Our experiment was conducted in two parts: single- and multi-step forecasting. In the single-step forecasting experiment, we employed random forest regression (RFR), multilayer perceptron (MLP), 1D convolutional neural network (1D-CNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), and the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model to predict car rental prices and compared the results of each model. In the multi-step forecasting experiment, rental prices after 7, 14, 21 and 30 days were predicted using the algorithms applied in single-step forecasting. The prediction performance was improved by applying Bayesian optimization hyperband. The experimental results demonstrate that the LSTM and ARIMA models were effective in predicting car rental prices. Based on these results, useful information could be provided to both rental car companies and consumers.