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How Early Making Car Rental Reservations

Posted by (Seattle) on

We have two legs of our trip where we would like to rent a car. We will have 5 days in Arles; and will want to see much of the surrounding area during 2 or 3 days of our stay. In Spain, we would like to rent a car for 2 to 3 days after our stop in Sevilla to tour the white hill towns on our way to Nerja.

I've been checking costs on some of the recommended sites for these areas (AutoEurope; Carjet; Hertz; etc.) and finding rates are nearly $100us/day for economy/compact cars. At this kind of rate I'm inclined to refine our travel plans once we arrive.

Are we likely to see costs increase substantially if we reserve once we arrive?

Posted by
3313 posts

Autoeurope will adjust your rate if their rates go down.

Posted by
881 posts

Since most of them are fully refundable, just book/reserve what you need now.

The price will most likely keep going up, and day of rates can be outrageous. You can always cancel it if you don't use it.

PS - 1-3 rentals in Europe tend to be uber expensive. You might actually get a better rate reserving it for 4-5 days, even if you don't use it for all of them.

Posted by
1358 posts

Some places in Europe are actually predicting a shortage of rental cars in the summer. I wouldn't wait until you get there to reserve.

Posted by
1329 posts

We saved $100 last year by booking early. Also, if you need an automatic, better to book early as there aren't that many of them and they can go fast. I recommend booking early.

Posted by
333 posts

'Early and often' is my motto

it doesn't usually cost anything to make a reservation with the big companies and canceling is easy.

Posted by
2790 posts

I always book as soon as I know what I am doing. You can cancel/rebook on most reservations without a risk. But the real truth is that even though I check periodically (and everytime AutoEurope sends me a 'sale') the early booking rate normally turns out to be the best I get.

The rates are generally just higher then we see in the US and if you have to have an automatic transmission all bets are off!

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