Brazil cheapest for car hire, Portugal most expensive

A 15-COUNTRY study of car hire costs by iCarhireinsurance.com reveals that the #Brazil and the United States are the cheapest places to hire a car this summer, while Portugal and Italy are the most expensive. 

Travellers will be paying on average £316 to rent a compact family car (e.g. a VW Golf) for a week this summer (July 30-August 6), across all destinations, although once 'extras' are added at the rental desk – including excess waiver insurance, an extra driver, a satnav and a child's seat – the price almost doubles to £612. Adding a tank of petrol (40 litres) takes the final price to £651.

In Portugal, the most expensive country in the study, it’s possible to pay almost £800 to hire a compact family car plus extras.

Petrol costs vary widely. The cheapest place to fill up is Florida where a full tank of petrol costs only £15, half the price of European petrol prices, which range from £37 in Spain to £56 in the UK.

With the Olympics in Rio this summer, Brazil has been included in the study for the first time, and is the cheapest place to hire a car. It costs £185 on average to hire a car for the week, with extras costing £72 in total compared with an overall average at all the destinations of £335.

Florida is the next most reasonable destination. The average cost of a week’s rental is £222, but the cost of extras is only £168. One of the reasons for this relatively low cost is that the car hire rate in the US often includes full Collision Damage Waiver with zero excess for overseas travellers, meaning customers do not need to buy e excess insurance cover, which is usually the biggest single outlay when a traveller picks up their hire car. But insurance in the US is complicated and depends on the in which cars are hired and the rental company. It is important to check the cover included in bookings.

From the cheapest to the most expensive (for the car hire cost, plus four 'extras' at the rental desk and petrol) the 15 countries (and 17 destinations) stacked up as follows:  

1.   Brazil (pick up from Rio de Janerio Airport) - total cost £257 

2.   USA (picking up from Orlando Airport, Florida) - total cost is £390
3.   Turkey (pick up from Dalaman Airport) - total cost is £515
4.   Germany (pick up from Munich Airport) - total cost is £528
5.   Holland (pick up from Amsterdam Airport) - total cost is £580
6.   Australia (pick up from Sydney Airport) – total cost is £608
7.   Belgium (pick up from Brussels Airport) - total cost is £615
8.   Ireland (pick up from Dublin Airport) - total cost is £686
9.   Greece (pick up in Crete) - total cost is £698
10. Spain (pick up from Barcelona Airport) - total cost is £742
11. Croatia (pick up from Dubrovnik Airport) – total cost is £743
12. France (pick up from Nice Airport) – total cost is £780
13. UK (pick up from London Heathrow) - total cost is £811
14. Italy (pick up from Milan Airport) - total cost is £835
15. Portugal (pick up from Faro Airport) - total cost is £893

Ernesto Suarez, founder and CEO of iCarhireinsurance.com said: ‘Our annual international study shows that the cost of hiring a car varies by over £300 depending on the country you are visiting, but this variation rises to over £600 when the cost of the extras is included. There are some truly shocking additional costs that holiday makers face, when picking up their hire car, making the original low headline price almost irrelevant when the final bill is settled at the desk.

‘People do a lot of research and careful planning for their holiday, but it’s easy to forget to apply the same level of diligence to booking the right rental car.’

www.icarhireinsurance.com


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Beware car hire waiver costs

CAR hire companies’ excess waiver policies are adding almost 50% to the original hire cost, according to a study by iCarhireinsurance.com, which compared the costs to hire a medium-sized car for a week in five European destinations from five large rental companies.  

Travellers often don’t know about excess waiver insurance, or how much it costs, until they arrive to pick up their hire car. Not purchasing this leaves car hirers exposed to the first part of any claim i.e., the excess amount if their hire car is damaged or stolen, which can be up to £1,400 even if it’s not their fault.

iCarhireinsurance.com, a provider of stand-alone car hire excess insurance, found the average cost for a week’s car rental was £237, while the average excess waiver policy from the rental company was £111 - adding almost 50% to the bill.

The study researched the costs to hire a car in Barcelona, Larnaca, Milan, Nice, and Tenerife from five leading rental companies … Avis, Budget, Europcar, Hertz, and Sixt in spring 2016. 

In Tenerife, drivers will be paying an additional 59% again on top of their week’s car hire for an excess waiver policy from the car hire company.  The cost of excess waiver from the rental companies varies considerably, but was often over the £111 average across the destinations.  In Milan, Europcar and Hertz charged £194 and £199 respectively for a week’s excess policy, while in Barcelona the same companies charged more than £140, and in Larnaca, Budget charged £168.

‘Car hirers could save themselves an enormous amount of money with a bit of planning before they travel,’ said Ernesto Suarez, CEO and founder of iCarhireinsurance.com.  ‘Anyone buying an excess waiver policy from the rental desk is paying on average £80 more than if they bought a policy from a stand-alone car hire excess provider. Our policies include the vulnerable parts of the vehicle such as windscreens and tyres, which are often excluded by the rental desk waivers.’

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Car hire sites ‘failing to disclose extras costs’

CAR HIRE sites are failing to disclose the cost of 'extras' during the booking process, leaving travellers in the dark about how much they may have to pay when they arrive to pick up their car, says iCarhireinsurance.com, a provider of car hire excess insurance.

Extras might include the cost for an extra driver, a child's car seat, an excess /waiver policy, and a satnav.

In a study of five global car hire companies – Budget, Hertz, Europcar, Sixt, and Avis – iCarhireinsurance.com found that often only half of the extra costs would be highlighted in the booking process.

The study found that while travellers could usually reserve extras including a child’s car seat and a satnav, it was not always possible to pay for them in advance, or find out the cost of the item.

‘Transparency when booking hire cars continues to be a big problem,’ said Ernesto Suarez, CEO and founder of iCarhireinsurance.com. ‘It’s very difficult for people to plan exactly how much they will need to pay for the hire car overall if they cannot see all the costs in advance.

‘Last year, six of the leading car hire companies in Europe made promises to improve their treatment of customers, including their transparency of prices, following an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Almost a year on, it is disappointing to see that transparency is still an issue.’

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