On the commercial pricing front, we continued our aggressive posture regarding contract negotiations

Good morning, and welcome to the Avis Budget Group Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Neal Goldner, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please costa rica vacation rentals go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Tonya. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me are Ron Nelson, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and David Wyshner, our Senior Executive Vice President costa rica vacation rentals and Chief Financial Officer.
Before we discuss our third quarter results, I would like to remind everyone that the company will be making statements about its future results and expectations, which constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Such statements are based on current expectations and the current economic environment and are inherently subject to economic, competitive and other uncertainties and contingencies beyond the control of management.
You should be cautioned that these statements are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Important assumptions and other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are specified in our earnings release, which was issued last night, our Form 10-K and other SEC filings.
If you did not receive a copy of our press release, it is available on our website at ir.avisbudgetgroup.com. We've provided slides to accompany this morning's costa rica vacation rentals conference call, which can be accessed on our website as well.
The company's comments today will focus on our results excluding certain items. These non-GAAP financial measures results are reconciled to our GAAP numbers in our press release and in the earnings call presentation on our website.
Thanks, costa rica vacation rentals Neal, and good morning. It's always nice to start these calls with the words, "We had a record quarter." But it's particularly gratifying costa rica vacation rentals this quarter, given that our results reflect costa rica vacation rentals continued progress costa rica vacation rentals on our strategic initiatives rather than a market-driven anomaly.
For example, in North America, we grew our rental volumes, both on and off-airport, while reporting our third consecutive quarter of increased year-over-year costa rica vacation rentals pricing, costa rica vacation rentals excluding acquisitions. In EMEA, our initiative to expand the Budget brand drove exceptionally strong volume and pricing growth, which helped us achieve the strongest quarterly result in recent history. At Zipcar, we began the process of capturing unconstrained weekend demand by sharing fleet, initially in New York, while at the same time, harvesting the cost synergies we expected from this acquisition. costa rica vacation rentals And along the way, we initiated our share repurchase program we announced in August, repurchasing approximately 860,000 shares in the quarter. The net result was the highest quarterly costa rica vacation rentals adjusted EBITDA in our history.
So let me spend a few minutes discussing each of these topics, costa rica vacation rentals starting with our North America costa rica vacation rentals segment. I particularly want to underscore how our third quarter results reflect some of our key long-term strategic initiatives and goals as these will continue to pay dividends as we go forward. costa rica vacation rentals In North America, the positive pricing costa rica vacation rentals trends we experienced in the first half of the year continued in the third quarter. Pricing was up 40 basis points, excluding acquisitions, and up approximately 1% when you take out the effects of the currency. We did institute price increases over the course of the third quarter, and we continue to shift volume to more profitable segments and channels.
On the commercial pricing front, we continued our aggressive posture regarding contract negotiations. This is having a positive effect. Year-to-date, we renewed more than 1,000 commercial contracts costa rica vacation rentals and have been enable the hold or increase rate nearly 60% of the time, and the average rate changes on renewals has improved as the years progressed. costa rica vacation rentals We've also held to the discipline of walking away from business on those occasion when we didn't think it was possible to make money at the rates being demanded. While this initiative will take several quarters to play out fully, our goal continues to be to get our average renewal rates to turn positive.
With respect to demand, I know there's been some concern among investors regarding on-airport demand weakness. But frankly, we're not seeing it. Our airport volume increased 3% in the third quarter, more than double the growth rate we experienced in the first half of the year. And we achieved this growth despite a decline in government business that reduced overall costa rica vacation rentals volume costa rica vacation rentals by a point and despite our intentional 25-plus percent reduction on take volumes. Moreover, preliminary data would suggest we held our airport market share even while reducing our presence in less profitable booking channels.
Each of our brands contributed to the growth with Avis volume up 2.5% in the quarter and Budget volume up 5%. Avis's growth was driven costa rica vacation rentals primarily by contracted commercial business, costa rica vacation rentals which increased 8%, while Budget's growth was driven by a similar increase in leisure costa rica vacation rentals volume. Just to be clear, these comments excludes costa rica vacation rentals Zipcar and Payless, so it is an apples-to-apples comparison.
Total North American revenue grew 11%, or 4% excluding Zipcar and Payless. Our focus on more profitable segments is showing good results. International inbound revenue increased 7%. Revenue from our higher margins, especially in premium vehicles, increased more than 11%. And revenue costa rica vacation rentals from associations increased 9%, primarily due to our expanded exclusive agreement with AARP, which we announced in August. We also saw continued growth in our local market operations. Off-airport revenue increased 6% as our strategy to focus our local market operations on general use rentals and capture more of our commercial customers' total rental spend continues to pay dividends.
costa rica vacation rentals We announced the acquisition of Payless in July, giving us a position in the faster-growing deep-value segment of the car rental market. Payless costa rica vacation rentals had a good summer, but perhaps, more importantly, we've already cascaded costa rica vacation rentals more than 2,000 Avis Budget cars to Payless, driving incremental fleet efficiencies across our North American operations. We anticipate, by the end of 2013, near 50 -- nearly 50% of the Payless fleet will be cars that were formerly in the Avis Budget fleet. In fact, going forward, we envision buying relatively few, if any, new cars for Payless and expect to satisfy virtually all their needs by cascading fleet. This enables us to hold these cars longer and average down the cost of the entire cycle of ownership.
Moving to our International segment. Our European operations had its best single costa rica vacation rentals quarter since at least 2008 with the volume increasing 7% year-over-year and every country contributing to the gain. Budget's volume increased 40% in the third quarter while Avis grew 2%. But if you factor out our decision to walk away from certain nonprofitable replacement business, primarily in the U.K., Avis volume was up 5% with growth well balanced between commercial and leisure rental days.
Our reported costa rica vacation rentals pricing was a 3% decline in time and mileage revenue per day in constant currency, but that doesn't tell the real story. In certain markets, we began to charge customers separately for airport surcharges. This has been previously included in our base T&M rates. So breaking them out reduced our reported T&M per day by around 3 points and boosted our non-T&M revenue significantly, particularly since we now are able to collect airport surcharges on our ancillary products and services.
The best way to get an accurate picture of the revenue environment is to look at the total revenue per rental day, which, in constant currency, actually increased 3% in EMEA. This growth include a 1.5% increase in price at Avis, more than a 7% increase of price at Budget and a 13% increase in the other revenue per rental day across costa rica vacation rentals both brands. The combination of increased revenue per rental day, a 4-point improvement in utilization and synergies from our integration efforts helped produce a 20% jump in adjusted EBITDA from EMEA and the best single quarter for our European business in recent history. We couldn't be more pleased with how our strategies to expand the Budget brand, grow ancillary revenues and integrate our European operations costa rica vacation rentals are contributing to our results.
In our Latin America/Asia-Pacific region, rental volumes increased 10% year-over-year, primarily due to the acquisition of Apex. Pricing remains soft, declining 5% in local currency and excluding Apex, for the reasons we discussed in August, costa rica vacation rentals competitive pricing, demand pressures related to government spending and general economic weakness in Australia. In addition, residual value softened somewhat during the quarter, leading the industry to be even more over-fleeted, so the inevitable result was soft pricing. Our management team has been moving aggressively to offset these challenges by trimming the fleet, cutting costs and aggressively costa rica vacation rentals promoting price increases. We remain hopeful that despite these pressures, our results in Australia costa rica vacation rentals and in the region as a whole will be within spitting distance of the 2013 targets we established at the beginning of the year.
As we announced in August, we agreed to invest roughly costa rica vacation rentals $50 million to acquire a 50% ownership stake in our Avis and Budget licensee in Brazil. The majority of the capital went into the company to fund fleet increases, which will allow us to increase the presence costa rica vacation rentals of our brands in the Brazilian costa rica vacation rentals car rental market and to capture a larger share of Brazil's domestic, international inbound and outbound vehicle rental spend. We also expect this investment to enable us to capture a higher percentage of our global corporate customers' rental car spend in Brazil, especially since the largest player in the Brazil costa rica vacation rentals domestic car rental market does not have a glo