Avis Budget Group Chose Urban Sign Group to Rebrand Two Houston Airports — At the Same Time

Two airports. Five brands. More than 230 signs. Every one fabricated in our shop.

When Avis Budget Group needed to rebrand its facilities at George Bush Intercontinental and Houston Hobby, the scope was big enough on its own: more than 230 signs spanning five brands — Avis, Avis Preferred, Budget, Budget Fastbreak, and Payless. What made it harder was the calendar. Houston was hosting matches in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with both airports bracing for a surge of international travelers. Everything had to be complete before the tournament began — both airports, in the same window, inside live rental facilities that never stop moving.

These were also our first two major projects with Avis Budget Group. They ran concurrently.

The scope

At Bush Intercontinental alone, the program covered 156 hanging stall signs, 27 hanging directionals, illuminated directionals and car return signs, face replacements in bent acrylic, aluminum, and flex face, trolley signs, freestanding key drop signs, frosted vinyl, and a custom display structure for the Fastbreak TV. At Hobby, the work included illuminated cabinets, nine concrete-base directionals, a custom snap-frame sign with changeable gas pricing, and a full repaint and LED retrofit of the existing pylon and monument signs.

Two of those builds were firsts for our shop: the Fastbreak TV display structure, and a multi-switch illuminated sign engineered so the main face and the arrow cabinets attached to it operate on separate circuits.

Every sign was designed, engineered, and fabricated in-house at our facility in Holmes, Pennsylvania.

The design process

Avis Budget's design firm spec'd the program and called out every sign for the project. Working from their plans, we created our own shop drawings and a complete installation guide — placement, specifications, and fabrication details for each sign type at each location. With more than 230 signs in play, accurate documentation was what kept design intent, fabrication, and installation aligned across two airports — and because design, engineering, and fabrication all sit under one roof, everything worked from one set of documents.

The logistics problem

The hardest part of this project wasn't any single sign. It was sequencing.

Fabricating 230+ signs is one challenge. Shipping them from Pennsylvania to Texas in the right order — so that install crews at two airports always had the right signs on hand and never sat idle across a three-week installation — is another. We managed it with a strict scope of work that assigned specific sign types to specific days, and used go-backs, change orders, and miscellaneous items to fill the gaps in between. Two separate crews ran the two airports simultaneously.

Working in a live facility

Rental car facilities don't close for signage. Over Memorial Day weekend, mid-installation, the Houston facilities handled roughly 1,500 rentals and returns. Our crews coordinated daily with Avis Budget's local operations team to keep the work moving without getting in the way of theirs — checking in with the site manager every working day, planning around peak traffic, and staying flexible on where and when each crew worked.

When a two-week delay hit on the general contractor's side for permits and airport approvals, the schedule absorbed it. The installation was completed on site: Bush Intercontinental wrapped in three weeks, Hobby was finished within days of it, and both facilities were carrying the new branding before the first World Cup travelers landed in Houston.

One partner, start to finish

Survey, design, engineering, fabrication, shipping logistics, and installation — one company, one project manager, one open line of communication with the client and a standing weekly call with the general contractor. No handoffs between vendors, no gaps for details to fall through.

That's how we've delivered signage programs for national brands for two generations, and it's how two airports got rebranded at once.