Today I was reading some posts, either on this travel forum or another (can't remember) about the great rate some people have on their upcoming Europe car rentals, due to having booked them a year ago. We have a travel plan for Sept. 2022 that involves a week in Murren, Switzerland, using public transportation and no rental cars, followed by a week in Provence, using rental cars. To bridge the two week-long stays, we plan to spend 2 nights in Chamonix. The plan has been to take the train from Murren to Chamonix (looks like a 3.5 hour train trip with multiple transfers) and rent the cars either upon arrival in Chamonix or upon departure from Chamonix. They'll be returned to the Marseille airport.
So after reading those posts, I thought I'd look into getting our car booked, even though our trip is a year away. I have used Gemut to do car rental bookings in Europe so I emailed to see if they would like our business for this booking. They told me that Chamonix has just one car rental facility, Europcar, but it has been shut down due to covid. They know it may re-open but said that at the present time, they can't help us with a car rental in that city.
That doesn't seem right, given that there are three Google reviews of that rental facility written within the past 3 weeks. Has anyone rented a car in Chamonix recently?
Or what about renting from the Chamonix Europcar site at any time in the past? Is it reliable? Have you been happy with the customer service?
Or does anyone have another suggestion of how to get our rental cars for our 9 days in France? We don't NEED the cars until we depart Chamonix, though we thought it would be nice to have them during both days we are there so that if it's foggy or rainy in Chamonix on our full day there, we can day trip to Annecy in hopes of having nicer weather there. The folks at Gemut, thinking that Chamonix is not operating, suggested renting on the French side of the airport in Geneva. So that would involve a train from Murren to Geneva (4.75 hours), rent the cars, and drive to Chamonix (1 hour). That's a longer travel day than we'd hoped for.
Another idea: We've talked of day tripping to Lake Geneva on one of our days in Murren. It would be to experience part of the Golden Pass railway, then visit Montreux or Lausanne or Vevey or Castle Chillon or take a hike on the terraced vineyards or take a boat ride on the lake--a couple of those things, not all of them. We know it will be a long day trip with a long train ride to get up there from Murren and then another long train ride to go back to Murren. Should we do that on our last full day in Switzerland, then after our Lake Geneva activities, get ourselves by train to the car rental facility on French side of the Geneva airport and then drive back to our Swiss VRBO home for our final night? I know we'd need to park in Lauterbrunnen since Murren is traffic free. In the a.m., we'd drive to Chamonix, which will get us there more quickly than the train would have? Would this be considered a one-country rental because drop off and pick up are both in France, or would the fact that we're doing some driving in Switzerland put us in a two-country rate category? Has anyone driven from Lauterbrunnen to Chamonix, who might comment on the drive?