Cut Your Rental Car Cost!
Rental car questions….
When should you rent a car? Far in advance, days before or wait till you get there?
Which rental car company gives nonrev’s the best deal?
Should you rent the car for 4 days or for a week?
Is weekend rental cheaper?
Is the smallest car always the cheapest rental?
Does one airline get a better discount for employees than another?
Nonrev’s are always looking to save money. So how to save money when renting a car? I decided we would do some research and do some serious price shopping on rental cars to see if I could find the answer.
So what did I find? No one rental car company always offered the best deal. Sometimes reserving far in advance gave us the best price. Other times close in did. Sometimes the smallest car was the best price, other times for just a couple of bucks more you got a nice large car. Sometimes one way rentals were a steal, other times not so much.
BUT there was one trick I learned and save huge amount on rates time and again. In one case it cut the price by 66% and that was BEFORE I applied the interline discount code! What was that trick?
I recently called Avis for a rental car for 4 days in Phoenix. The quote was $199 for the 4 days plus the taxes. They then proceeded to rattle off a number of taxes, which brought the total rental cost to over $400!!! I told them to keep the car.
When I got to Phoenix and took the hotel shuttle I told them about the experience trying to rent a car in Phoenix. They then told me they tell every client they have not to rent at the airport. Rent OFF SITE!. They said there were 3 rental locations within a few miles of the hotel, they would take me to them and the savings would almost in half. I called a couple of the rental locations and to my amazement the price was over 50% less than what I was quoted for the same car from the on airport location for the same rental car company!
So when I did the research on where the best car rental rate could be found, I went online and got quotes for 14 different cities over 14 different dates and for different car types and from different car companies. In every single case the rate quoted for pickup at an off airport location was less than picking up at the airport!!!!
The savings was not small either. Look at the next page for the quotes. Some are as much as 66% LESS!!!!
A few side notes first. The off airport locations usually have more limited hours than the airport location and may be closed on weekends or holiday.
In the examples above the offsite location for Orlando the same rate was found for both the Hyatt by the Orlando Airport and the Lake Buenavista by Walt Disney World. The Miami off airport site was in Miami Beach. The Seattle location was in downtown Seattle. The Phoenix location was in Tempe, next to the airport. In Las Vegas it was just off of the strip.
In the case of Chicago, the off site location was in downtown Chicago, so take the L downtown to get your car and save almost 30% on your car rental! The L costs you $5 to go from Chicago O’Hare to downtown Chicago and only $2.25 from Chicago Midway to downtown Chicago.
For Honolulu, the off airport location was the Hilton Hawaiian Village. So the off airport locations were pretty convenient in most all cases.
A few side notes first. The off airport locations usually have more limited hours than the airport location. So if the off airport location is going to be closed when you arrive, head to your hotel and go the next morning.
Not all rental car companies in all cities have off airport locations.
The car company we found that has the most off airport locations was by far, Enterprise! National and Alamo were next for most off airport locations but in some cities all of the majors had at least one off airport location.
This applies also to international cities but the price differences in some cases actually made the off airport locations more expensive. So shop around.
If you have a choice of airports to fly into check the car rental rates. For instance in the case of London we found that London Gatwick offered lower rates than could be found at London Heathrow.
Also the rates shown were for returning the car to the same location. When you rent ask how much it would be to return it to the airport location. In some cases the rental car companies won’t charge anything extra, other times there is a substantial charge. Depends on their needs and when you are renting.
These rates did not take into account any airline employee discount which might be applicable. Also those discounts may be applicable only at airport locations. In the case of Enterprise they might also bring the car to you at your hotel for an additional fee.