TheJellyBeans.net
Whether you need a rental car to get to your destination, explore your destination, or
any other reason, there are several easy ways to save money on your booking.
We’re here to share three tips that could help you save hundreds of dollars the next
time you book a rental car.
Our first tip is to keep checking prices after you’ve booked your rental car.
The nice thing about most rental cars – compared to airline tickets and other
travel purchases – is that you don’t pre-pay for the reservation.
This means that if you have a rental car booked and you find a cheaper price on the same rental
car, you can cancel your existing reservation and book the new, cheaper reservation for
no additional cost.
And you can do this as many times as you want, up until the day you pick up the car!
For example, in the Spring of 2018, we started tracking the price of a full-size rental car
for a hypothetical family vacation to Orlando, Florida during the busiest time of the tourist
season: the first week of July.
We planned on picking up the rental car on Saturday, June 30th and returning it on Sunday,
July 8th for an 8-day rental.
It should be noted that we tracked the top 8 North America rental car companies to ensure
the prices we observed included a reasonable level of service.
The first price for our full-size rental car was $375 total, which wasn’t too bad.
However, after fluctuating between $334 and $500 for over a month and a half, the total
price dropped all the way down to $240 about three weeks before the start of our example
vacation.
If we had continuously checked the price of our rental car, we would have cancelled our
existing reservation and booked a new, cheaper reservation 4 times, starting at $359, and
again at $334, and again at $262, and one last time at $240.
Doing those re-bookings would have saved us $135, or 36%, from the original booking price.
And if we were unfortunate enough to have initially booked our full-size rental car
at the maximum total price we observed of $500, the lowest price of $240 would have
saved us $260, or 52%, from the original booking price.
Although we like to check the prices on a daily basis, you can still save money just
by checking prices on a weekly or biweekly basis.
Be aware that this “Book It and Check It” approach – as we call it – only works
with rental car reservations that do not require pre-payment at the time of your booking.
Rental car companies and sites like Hotwire, Priceline, and others provide discounts for
paying at the time of booking and this tip will not work for those.
Make sure you double-check before completing your booking.
Our second tip is to make sure you consider all available vehicle types when you’re
looking for a rental.
Generally speaking, larger rental vehicles – and luxury vehicles – will cost more,
but that’s not always the case.
In addition to tracking the price of the full-size rental car for our hypothetical trip to Orlando,
we also tracked the price of a rental SUV at the same time.
While the initial total price of the full-size rental car was $375, the initial total price
for the SUV was $531, which is what we would expect.
However, the price of the SUV quickly dropped into the $400 range and – for a stretch
of two weeks in mid-May – the SUV was actually cheaper than the full-size car.
At one point, the SUV was a total of $144 cheaper!
After getting as low as $286, the price of the rental SUV quickly jumped up again and
then roughly tracked the total price of the full-size rental up until the day of our reservation.
The cheapest total price we saw for the rental SUV was $256, which was $275, or 52%, cheaper
than the original booking price.
That price was also just $16 more than the cheapest total price we found for a full-size
rental car.
Depending on what kind of vehicle you prefer or need, that $16 might be well worth it to
rent an SUV.
Finally, our third tip is to make sure you consider all the rental car locations available
in the area you’re looking at.
This includes checking both the rental car companies located at the airport and the standalone
companies located off-site and not associated with the airport.
Instead of using the same hypothetical Orlando vacation for this tip, we decided to look
at another hypothetical family vacation during the first week of July to Boston, Massachusetts
via Boston Logan International Airport.
In addition to the rental car companies located at the airport there are also rental car companies
located off-site about a 10 to 15 minute drive away from the airport.
For the entire time we tracked prices -- mid-May to the end of June -- the total cost of
a full-size rental car at an off-site location was cheaper than the total cost of a full-size
rental car at the airport.
In fact, for a two-week stretch in early June, the total cost of the off-site rental car
was over $200 cheaper, or more than 50% less expensive!
For that amount of savings, you could easily get a taxi, a rideshare, or use public
transportation – if it’s available – to get from the airport to the off-site rental car company
and still save a lot of money.
It doesn’t matter why you need a rental car; you can still save money using these
three tips: Book it and check it.
Consider all available rental vehicle types.
And consider all available rental car locations.