Roundtrip Car Rental vs. 2 Separate Rentals

I just checked some rates on AutoEurope and they offer vehicles from Avis, Hertz and Europcar. Avis had a $26 drop off fee, the others had none. I don't know how many days you'll be staying in Munich, but many of the better rates quoted are for a weekly rental. If you go to their website, you can plug in different scenarios to find the one most economical for you. Budget parking at the airport starts at €19 a day.

Just in case you are not aware of that: Trains are a good alternative for many routes within Germany - so if you are travelling to cities, you might consider skipping one of the two car rentals altogether. Obviously, car rental can still make sense, especially when travelling to rural areas.

forgive me if this sounds dumb, but why can't you park at the hotel?

"We will be touring Germany for two weeks... I am wondering if it might be more cost effective to maintain one rental for two weeks..."

Will you travel prior to November 1? There's a cost-effective deal for two traveling together that might work for you - the 7-day twin pass at €416 would get you around the entire country by train. You use the pass on any 7 days you choose on any trains you wish to any destinations you like at any hour of the day during your stay. No drop-off fees (there's nothing to drop off or pick up of course,) no parking fees, no gas fill-ups, no insurance troubles, no contracts. Go just about anywhere - Germany has a dense rail network with more than 5,000 train stations.

https://www.bahn.com/en/view/offers/passes/german-rail-pass-promotion.shtml

https://mdeen.home.xs4all.nl/temp/dbkaart.png

Thank you very much for the feedback! It is appreciated.

We didn't consider parking in Munich/at hotel due to the guidance that it is difficult to navigate the city and parking is challenging.

do you have your hotel booked? If not, you might consider staying at my favourite hotel near central Munich, near the Messe, near two autobahns, free parking, superior breakfast, 700m to an inner zone S-bahn station and a bus outside the door, one way to the S-Bahn and the other to a nearby U-Bahn.

Might be too late to help you, but my experience with Europcar is they do not charge a one-way fee if your pick-up and drop off are in Germany. They frequently have very good specials for Germany, but you need to watch out, more than once they've given me a car a class lower than what I booked (key tag clearly has car class and online) and then argued it was correct. As far as rentals go though I've found Europcar and Budget to be the cheapest. The one time I used a one-way rental with Budget the drop fee was reasonable and the rental was still cheaper than anywhere else.

I have also found, by playing with dates and coupons, renting it for the entire period costs the same or less than splitting the rental. I don't know why, but it's worked for me every time I've considered it. I don't know if it would be like that in your case, something to check.

Those exorbitant one-way drop fees are generally charged for dropping "cross-border". For example picking up in Germany and dropping in Switzerland. Just merely dropping off in a different city (in the same country) is usually not a big deal. But Germany has lots of trains that travel to many places you may enjoy seeing.

The only place in Germany that I really needed a rental vehicle was in and around Fuessen and from there daytrip to Linderhof.