I am planning a trip to Miami the last week of March. When I got to reserving a rental car at the airport, I was knocked over by the prices. The cheapest I could find was around $79/day for a compact - before all the taxes and fees. I used to be able to find something at $35/day or less in most cities. I haven’t rented in some time, but have the prices gone up this much, or is it just Miami? Priceline didn’t help either.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to get a better deal in Miami?
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Thread moved from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
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Don’t rent the car at the airport. Take a cab to your hotel or where ever you’re staying, and then rent a car from another location. There is frequently a supplement for a car rented from an airport location.
See
Fox rentals seem to be about 1/3 to 1/2 the price of rest. But yes, all the major car rental agencies (see link) are in the 70’s and go up (some way up) from there.
That’s it in a nutshell. Find a rental location off airport grounds. The cab fare (both ways) will be more than made up for by the daily fee savings.
Sometimes you can work it so that you take a cab to downtown/your hotel/the suburbs, pick up the cheap rental car, and then drop it off at the airport when you’re done for very little to no additional charge. It pays to play around with travel websites, changing dates, locations, etc.
be sure to not only get insurance, but be sure it includes “loss of use” coverage. Many ppl assume since they use a card like American Express that says you get free insurance on rental cars, it may not include loss of use to the rental agency. Loss of use means they can still bill an insured renter for the daily rate times the number of days the car is in the shop.
also, does your employer have an account with a big firm like Avis, or national, or Enterprise? I went on vacation once, and was surprised to see they pulled up my company profile from my credit card ( I had rented while on company business several times prior). They even pulled up my profile and gave me the discount without asking, not knowing I left that employer, on another occasion.
I might have been in a jam if I had wrecked the car, but I took the chance. After all, I didn’t ask for the employer discount via their account number on my profile. They just assumed I was on business, and later, that I was still employed by them.
many big cities, have cheaper than airport remote parking a couple miles away, that have rental car lots w/in walking distance. So you can save on both, and no taxi needed.
I had this happen once, when I flew into Orlando at the very last minute - I missed a flight to Tampa, so literally walked across the hall to the opposite gate and talked my way onto an Orlando flight so I wouldn’t have to spend the day in the airport. Got to Orlando and found it’s not possible to fly on to Tampa since they’re so close to each other. No shuttles or anything like that connect the two cities. It also turned out that this was Daytona weekend, so there were no cars whatsoever available to rent. I could rent a passenger van, one way, for $300.
I don’t know if there are any big events in Miami that weekend, but it is Easter Weekend, and most of Florida gets expensive during Spring Break, which is roughly mid February until April, the popular beach cities even more so. Definitely check with some of the off airport places, but that might be the best you’ll find.
Yes! I’ve done this in Phoenix where there is a huge premium added to the airport car rental counters. Your hotel might even have an airport shuttle.
There you have it: as **Shibboleth **points out, you arrive at a peak travel period for South Florida (Spring Break+Easter).
A quick search tells me that the last week of April you have as of now multiple offers @ $20/day (pre-tax/fees/insurance) right out of MIA airport.
That same search shows me rental car base rates from the in-city locations in Miami are not that different from the airport location, over your March dates (there may be a savings in “facilities fees” items, though).
Check out www.disboards.com, specifically the transportation forum. Tons of good advice on getting deals on rental cars in FL, up to and including discount codes at most of the major companies.
Actually, the best advice is to do some quick research and find out what insurance coverage you may already have, and go from there. It’s quite possible that your current car insurance already covers you when you rent a car. And it’s also quite possible that your credit card will cover you as well when you use it to rent a car, maybe even the “loss of use” charge.
Even if you’re not covered under “loss of use”, you need to decide if it’s worth it to you. If that coverage costs $5/day, and you rent for a week, you’re paying $35 for what may be, at most, a $500 charge ($50/day x 10 days in the shop). That’s a terrible deal for insurance.
Always remember - all the damage waivers/insurance offered by the rental companies are a huge profit center for them.
Seconded. Last time we flew and rented a car, we found there was a fairly steep “rented it at the airport” fee tacked on top of the rental and, in fact, this was a factor in deciding which of two cities to fly into.
Tourists don’t vote, you see, so can’t veto fees like that.
Some of the off-airport agencies may even do airport pickup if you phone them when you land. Yes, it’s more of a hassle than just renting at the airport, but the savings can be considerable.
The one downside of renting at non-airport locations is that they often have a much smaller selection of cars. And at least with the company I rent with most often (many rentals a year), they shuffle the higher-mileage cars to the non-airport locations. So my rate of “crappy cars” is much higher when I rent somewhere other than the airport. Maybe this doesn’t matter to you if cost is the primary factor, but it’s something to think about.