1. Introduction
In Kyrgyzstan, most of the time, access to vehicles for hire is hindered by infrastructure that is out of date, services that are too informal or coordination between vehicle owners and renters that is really unreliable. The conventional rental services in Bishkek and in the countryside often need initial approval, and confirmation is done offline or through personal referrals. As the movements of people and tourism in Kyr-gyzstan rise, which is largely due to the interest expressed by foreign nationals in the local naturalness, mountains, and cultural tourism, there should be a system that can be expanded and that is fully digital that is expected to be established in the future.
The most recent market studies have indicated that more than 70% of the rentals being managed informally i.e., most of them are cycling through social networks or messaging platforms. This then leads to misunderstandings, bad booking practices and non-transparency in pricing. Tourists who are in Kyrgyzstan often complain about difficulties encountered in the provision of reliable vehicles and lack of understanding about the terms of the rental. Quite interestingly, people from Kyrgyzstan are also not well furnished with the insured and standardized platforms where they may rent vehicles, especially when they are living in a rural local area.
RentCarKG was a car rental service platform that came amidst the necessity, and it was designed to satisfy the need. It is comprised of a user-friendly, multilingual interface that helps customers search, book, and control a car using a modern web interface. By providing the opportunity to implement the right features, the app solves the mistakes made with no track-ing of availability, limited user roles, and poor communication between clients, and vehicle owners. This document depicts the creation, deployment, and testing of RentCarKG as well as the part it has in the larger context of transportation in Kyrgyzstan undergoing digitalization.
2. Related Work
The digitalization of the car rental industry, such as Turo, Getaround, and Zipcar, has become a global phenomenon. These companies offer peer-to-peer or centralized solutions. The said platforms are particularly like to user ratings, auto-mated booking systems, and mobile access. However, local solutions in Central Asia remain rare. According to [
1], the majority of rental services in Kyrgyzstan are still using Instagram, WhatsApp, or local websites. This trend is largely caused by the lack of such features as real-time availability, trust-based authentication, and automated booking workflows.
Looking at the global perspective, it is evident that digital rental platforms can remove hassle and create confidence. The case of Turo, which via instant booking features achieved 32% more cross-city rentals, best illustrates this. In comparison, the Kyrgyz market still has not made the mentioned practices as the standard, thus producing inefficiencies of a considerable degree and potential customer dissatisfaction.
It is revealed in documents like [
2] that the situation in Kyrgyz car rental market is strikingly informal. Fragmented platforms and lack of standardization lead the way in that market. Needless to say, as proven by CAB.KG, the implemen-tation of rental platforms that have more structured features would greatly enhance tourism infrastructure and minimize the risks to both owners and renters.
3. Problem Statement
Car rental in Kyrgyzstan is largely unregulated and untidy. The renters usually resort to social media or messaging plat-forms without any certainty of the vehicle they want or safety. A missing centralized system not only hinders but also user protection and thus the service scalability. The paper states the problem as the absence of a digital mobility infrastructure in the market and then creates and describes a custom solution to the problem.
4. Hypothesis
We are speculating that a user-oriented, multi-language car rental platform with a powerful server-side functionality as well as an adaptable website interface can go beyond just establishing credibility with customers, by also minimizing any inconsistencies in booking and setting up a growth-friendly structure for the consciousness of Kyrgyzstan’s new digital mobility businesses.
Furthermore, we are of the opinion that the system would also be good for:
Car owners by providing structured booking management and better calendar control;
Renters by offering secure, verified listings and clear booking terms;
Administrators by enabling role control and analytics for platform moderation.
5. Methods
The development process followed a typical agile method-ology:
Requirement Analysis: Interviews with local users and car owners identified gaps in communication, pricing transparency, and booking reliability.
System Design: The architecture was separated into backend (Java, Spring Boot) and frontend (React), with PostgreSQL as the database.
Authentication: Implemented via JWT for session secu-rity and Google OAuth2 for easy third-party login.
Multilingual Design: UI was localized into Kyrgyz, Russian, and English via internationalization libraries.
MVP Testing: A pilot version was deployed for 25 users over two weeks.
A. Software Stack
Spring Boot (RESTful services, security, validation)
React.js with TailwindCSS and Axios for frontend
PostgreSQL for relational data modeling
JWT for stateless session management
Google OAuth2 via Spring Security OAuth
6. Results
The MVP of RentCarKG includes the following:
User roles (Admin, Owner, Client) with dashboard access
Booking system with approval/cancellation
Car search and filtering
Email notifications and multilingual UI
Penalty rules for late cancellations A. Testing Feedback
92% completion rate for first-time bookings
85% of users preferred the multilingual interface
80% said the booking calendar was ”very intuitive”
B. Observed Benefits
Reduced miscommunication between owner and renter
Centralized control of vehicle listings
Immediate visibility of rental status and vehicle availabil-ity
C. User Journey Example
An example that can help you understand the basic user flow is a consumer called Aibek, who planned a trip to Issyk-Kul for a weekend and needs a car to rent. Let’s say he signs in RentCarKG via Google and picks the right car via filters and he is keeping his SUV that has been rented from Friday till Sunday which is like that of the Toyota Prado car by the owner who has been verified. When the owner gets the request for the car being booked, he/she sends back a confirmatory mail allowing Aibek to get a message of ...
D. Planned Integrations
The next release cycle includes the following integrations:
Online payment gateway (e.g., Stripe, Paybox)
SMS verification for new accounts
Car insurance data linkage
Dynamic pricing based on demand periods (e.g., holidays, weekends)
E. Platform Analytics
The MVP version includes Google Analytics integration to track:
Initial data shows that over 60% of users preferred using the Russian interface, while 30% selected English, and the remainder used Kyrgyz. SUVs and sedans were the most booked categories. The bounce rate on the car detail page was only 18%, suggesting high user engagement.
7. Challenges and Lessons Learned
It was found that the process of building and testing RentCarKG, or more simply, its development, was a complex one as the team had to cope with a dozen issues that called for practical decisions and cuts in functionality.
A. Localization Challenges
One of the things that consumed most of our time was finding a way to have multilingual support in such a manner that it would not impact the frontend core logic. As Kyrgyz, Russian, and English have different sentence structures and different vocab lengths, the problem of text overflow and layout shift had to be solved by a special maintenance team. We based our translations on the dynamic language switching i18next library and we stored them outside the program for easy reference later.
B. Handling Booking Conflicts
Another issue was the potential conflicts coming from the MVP. In the case of the data and the database, the issue was that the read and the write processes were not speaking to one another and as a result reads were incorrect, creating a problem in the frontend as well. So, to solve this issue, we added a lock at the database level during the confirmation of the reservations to ensure atomicity. This action not only reduced the possibility of overlapping bookings by a considerable margin but also assisted in the creation of a better environment for both the owners and their clients.
C. User Feedback Loops
The feedback we got from our customers made a big difference. The calendar interface made it hard for users at first because they had to figure out one of the dates manually that is why the process had no success. After many complaints, we learned our lesson, corrected mistakes, and added them with suggestions on how to use tooltips. So in this case, users and their feedback are considered the main driving force for the success of an MVP project. Surely and not directly, that is the main point.
D. Lessons for Future Work
We have figured out that even in smaller local markets, users are demanding high-quality digital products. The reduction of the performance (especially image loading, for car photos) and mobile responsiveness caused a good change in the user reten-tion. Also, a clear user role and the one with the administrative control became (”w”) the key point(s) to manage the potential abuse or disputes between the platform.
8. Potential Social and Economic Impact
The wide adoption of RentCarKG would be to the mutual benefit of the citizens as well as the economy of Kyrgyzstan. A well-organized digital environment not only helps change the people’s attitude toward the more trustworthy and accessible rental market but vastly improves the situation, especially in the remote regions.
A. Economic Opportunities for Car Owners
There are a lot of citizens in Kyrgyzstan who have their own vehicles yet they are not used completely. RentCarKG allows them to make money out of their idle cars, furthering the cause of micro-entrepreneurship, and generating passive income. As the users can have their vehicles listed with little knowledge of the technical language, the entrance barrier is still low.
B. Tourism Enablement
The platform follows the government’s shift towards sus-tainable tourism in the country. Tourists are enabled by the improved rental services to self-discover locations such as Issyk-Kul, Osh, or Song-Kol without a need for any unofficial invite. This can in effect give a boost to the local economy through higher consumption and service need.
C. Digital Ecosystem Development
Projects like RentCarKG also indirectly boost digital liter-acy and digital infrastructure in Kyrgyzstan. As the number of users of mobile-first, web-based platforms grows, the sectors of transport, insurance, and tourism continue to be more prepared for the digital transformation. Another feature is that it can be used for other local services so that they can scale, hence, leading to more innovation and the initiation of other startups.
9. Market Potential in Kyrgyzstan
The car rental market in Kyrgyzstan is still developing, with most services concentrated in major cities like Bishkek and Osh. There are over 1.2 million registered vehicles in the country, many of which remain unused for long periods. This presents a substantial opportunity for peer-to-peer and platform-based rental services like RentCarKG. Furthermore, the number of tourists visiting Kyrgyzstan has increased by over 20% annually since 2018 (excluding COVID-19 years), creating demand for reliable, digitized transportation options.
A. Demographic Demand
People, who are young and active, aged in between 20 to 35, are those, who will more readily use transportation means that are app-based for the fulfilling of their daily needs. Today local questionnaires suggest that more than 60% of this age group have smartphones and actively use online banking and e-commerce channels. These statistics indicate the good match of RentCarKG’s business model with the behavior patterns of the rising middle class of Kyrgyzstan.
10. Comparison with International Platforms
On one hand Turo and Getaround are the leaders in the US and some European countries and on the other, their operating models are mostly incompatible with most of the infrastructure and legal frameworks issues in Central Asia. This is where RentCarKG steps in and simply takes patterns that have been verified like owner verification, calendar integration, and digital contracts and make them applicable to the local situation.
Key differences include:
Multilingual interfaces specifically including Kyrgyz and Russian
Simplified identity verification tailored for local docu-mentation
.
Manual override options for regions with limited internet coverage
By executing their own solutions inside the country and gaining the most from the foreign markets, RentCarKG is moving from ad-hoc local solutions to a totally digital set of services that are also structured.
11. Future Work and Research Directions
The development of RentCarKG opens new avenues for academic and practical exploration. Potential topics for future research include:
Behavioral analytics of rental patterns across seasons and regions
Optimizing fleet distribution using AI-based demand pre-diction
Legal frameworks and smart contracts for vehicle sharing in Central Asia
Technically, future iterations of the platform may explore:
Progressive Web App (PWA) versions for rural accessi-bility
Blockchain-based rental agreements
Open API for third-party integration (tour agencies, in-surance companies)
12. Sustainability and Environmental Goals
RentCarKG also contributes to environmental sustainability. By promoting shared vehicle use, it reduces the number of privately owned, underutilized cars on the road. In urban areas, this may lead to reduced traffic congestion and lower emissions. Moreover, digital contracts and paperless booking help minimize the ecological footprint.
A. Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Support
Future updates will prioritize the listing of electric and hybrid vehicles. Car owners will be incentivized to register environmentally friendly vehicles with lower platform fees and promotional visibility. This policy aligns with national goals on reducing carbon emissions and encourages green mobility practices among citizens.
13. Community Engagement and Local
PARTNERSHIPS
One of the ways RentCarKG is going to be able to improve trust among customers is by establishing relations with local mechanics, insurance agents, and the authorities that would conduct business in those places. These partners have to be vetted first though they will still help with account setups and checking the cars.
A. Workshops and Digital Literacy Programs
One of the ways to become more socially responsible, the team of RentCarKG, is going to hold the workshops in the countryside to let the car owners have a clearer idea about the platform if they are new to e-service. This way, they get more than familiar with digital inclusion and eventually, they also get to explore new opportunities for generating cash.
B. Pilot Programs in Mountain Regions
One significant effort is being made by the team of Rent-CarKG as they prepare to bring the pilot programs to the most popular tourist destinations such as Jeti-Oguz,¨ and Naryn in order to test their improvements regionally.
XIV. EXPERIMENT: BOOKING EFFICIENCY COMPARISON
To evaluate the real-world efficiency of the RentCarKG platform, we conducted a simple benchmark comparing tra-ditional manual booking methods (such as through Telegram or Instagram) with RentCarKG’s automated digital process.
A. Methodology
We attempted to book the same car 10 times from the comfort of our offices through each method, handle responses and possibly confirmations from car owners; for the tradi-tional booking channel. On the contrary, the bookings with RentCarKG were made through the platform’s calendar-based interface.
B. Results
The results are summarized in
Table 1.
C. Interpretation
According to the findings, the deployment of RentCarKG is associated with an increase in efficiency and reliability. The failure of basic methods has various reasons, such as late or missed information, inconsistent updates on product availability, or unclear cost information. In the ComfortCarKG system, the orderly process of data transformation is rewarding in many ways to both tenants and owners from the trust perspective.
This straightforward experiment provides credibility for the assumption that a locally focused, customer-centric service can significantly enhance car rental experiences in emerging digital marketplaces.
14. Discussion
The promotion of the RentCarKG platform is an illustration of the potential and the present difficulties in Kyrgyzstan’s digital mobility infrastructure development. The MVP test results argue that customers prefer simpler and more personal-ized interaction with the system. However, vast improvements should be made in terms of inventiveness, affordability, and offline support.
The realization was that if a service is not being provided in the three main languages of the Central Asia region (Rus-sian, Kyrgyz and English), it would not succeed. Therefore, we chose i18n libraries and introduced dynamic translation management to cater for this. At the same time, the data we received confirmed the fact that the primary design for the interface had to be the mobile-first one especially towards the users whose geography is beyond urban areas.
Even though through RentCarKG we accomplish the au-tomation of the reservations, the process still remains con-strained because of the missing connection with legal and insurance matters. As opposed to Turo or Zipcar, the typical licensing regimes that are used to standardize the expected legal situation do not exist for RentCarKG. That is why the back-end that manager of the system will have is multi-complex while the operational tasks will also be larger in number, even though the solution is excellent.
Looking from the business model point of view, user engagement data reveals that there is a major demand for SUV vehicles and weekend rentals. This is consistent with tourist-driven term mobility. However, the possibilities of leasing vehicles for a long period and establishing the fleet partnership are still uncharted.
At last, no access to the mobility data in Kyrgyzstan will close the possibility of introducing automation and planning. But in the future, cooperation with city rulers and open data projects would bring more benefits, such as routing optimiza-tion, demand forecasting, and infrastructure maintenance.
15. Conclusions
research contributes an applied evaluation of RentCarKG, demonstrating its potential to address transportation inefficien-cies through structured platform design.RentCarKG demon-strates that a car rental platform adapted to Kyrgyzstan’s local realities and built with modern web technologies can serve both residents and visitors efficiently. The modular architecture enables future additions such as payment integration, mobile apps, and real-time GPS tracking.
Further enhancements could include:
A mobile application with push notifications
Integration with Kyrgyzstan’s road tax and insurance databases
Partnership with car dealerships and tour agencies
In the future, there are plans to take the technology to other Central Asian markets and make it compatible with public transport systems. The latter could lead to the creation of a single mobility ecosystem in this region.
In Kyrgyzstan, people often face difficulties in getting a car from a rental service due to the lack of appropriate infrastruc-ture, informal legal status, or unreliable vehicle owner-renter coordination. The traditionally used rental systems in Bishkek and regional areas are usually only possible by the approval of the landlord, follow-up confirmation, or personal referrals. However, as the mobility and tourism in Kyrgyzstan is getting more intensive due to the foreign enthusiasm in local nature, mountains, and cultural tourism, the demand for a scalable and digital rental system will be more urgent.
Thus, RentCarKG is a platform created in response to the needs of the consumers of the car rental service sector. The platform provides multiple, rich-choice, multilingual and user-friendly interface for users to search, book and manage cars. The application, on the other hand, successfully eradicates major issues, including the absence of vehicle availability tracking, very little user roles, and poor communication be-tween clients and vehicle owners. This paper covers the design, execution, and evaluation of RentCarKG.
16. Scalability and Regional Expansion
Currently, RentCarKG is concentrating on the Kyrgyz mar-ket, however, the platform’s design is modular and it has the capacity for multi-tenant deployment. This not only provides the possibility of expanding to the neighboring states in Central Asia like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan but also does that with the lowest possible technical load.
A. Localization Strategy
All locations are planned to operate with region-specific: content, currency, and government-compliant documentation. In addition, the customer should get the possibility to have any tool, – for instance, the ones needed for realizing the Silk Road project, – which would be compatible with those of the officers of the Uzbek government.
B. Cross-Border Rentals
With the increase in the number of tourists and the imple-mentation of “Silk Road Visa” projects, RentCarKG will be able to introduce cross-border rental contracts wherever it is allowed. This will relieve travelers of the imposition, e.g. rent a car in Bishkek, and return it at Almaty, and at the same time, it will expand the market to a broader audience.
Data Availability Statement
You can have the data on which the conclusions of this investigation are based simply by making a request to the author.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest.
References
- Dzen.ru, “Car rental services in Kyrgyzstan: Overview of market,” [Online]. Available: https://dzen.ru/a/ZHXhiHEpHhRFtfLh.
- CAB.KG News, “Digitalization of transport rental in Kyrgyzstan,” [Online]. Available: https://cab.kg/news/11.
- C. Severance, “OAuth: Open standard for API authorization,” IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 74–77, 2012. [CrossRef]
- Sharifi and A., R.. Khavarian-Garmsir, “The COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on cities and major lessons for urban planning, design, and management,” Science of the Total Environment, vol. 749, p. 142391, 2020. [CrossRef]
- Cohen and B. Kietzmann, “Ride on! Mobility business models for the sharing economy,”.
- Organization & Environment, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 279–296, 2014. [CrossRef]
Table 1.
Comparison of Booking Methods.
Table 1.
Comparison of Booking Methods.
| Metric |
Manual Booking |
RentCarKG |
| Avg. booking time |
2.4 hours |
6 minutes |
| Failure rate |
30% |
0% |
| Multilingual support |
No |
Yes |
| Mobile-friendly interface |
No |
Yes |
| Booking transparency |
Low |
High |
|
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).