Palm Beach Airport Code Change Creates Car Rental Distribution Gap

Car rental operators serving West Palm Beach may want to check how their inventory is appearing across online booking channels following the airport's recent code change.

President Donald J. Trump International Airport's IATA code officially changed from PBI to DJT on Aug. 18, following the airport's renaming in July. The new DJT code is now used for airline reservations, ticketing, baggage tags, and other passenger-facing systems.

But the transition may not be occurring uniformly across car rental distribution channels.

Robin Brand, partnerships manager at Movly, recently tested rental availability on Kayak using both airport codes for the same Oct. 13-20 rental period. The searches produced significantly different results.

According to Brand, a search using PBI returned 136 vehicles from Alamo, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, FlexWays, Fox, Movly, National, and Payless.

Running the same dates under DJT returned 146 vehicles from Ace, Dollar, Europcar, Hertz, Sixt, Thrifty, and Turo. Brand said Easirent was the only rental company appearing in both searches.

The results also differed in vehicle counts and pricing. "The two searches showed different car counts, different brands, and different prices," Brand said.

The discrepancy suggests some rental inventory may still be mapped to the former PBI code while other inventory has migrated to DJT. That could leave an operator invisible to customers depending on which airport identifier a booking platform or traveler uses.

A Five-Minute Check for Operators

Brand recommends that rental companies serving the airport conduct their own searches across major booking sites using identical dates but switching between PBI and DJT.

"If you have cars at Palm Beach, check both airport codes on major booking sites immediately," Brand said. "Confirm that your vehicle inventory feeds link to both PBI and DJT while these platforms update their systems."

The issue also illustrates a broader distribution challenge for rental operators. Complete airport code changes are uncommon, but location updates, mapping errors, and inconsistencies between reservation systems, aggregators, and online travel sites can cause inventory to disappear from individual shopping channels.

Brand said Movly routinely audits booking channels by conducting searches that replicate what customers see and works with distribution partners when it identifies mapping discrepancies.