Car Hire - any tips to make it cheaper?!

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We’re going to France in July- go most years as friends own a property we rent from them. I’ve just been looking and realised that car hire costs are nearly £200 more pw than when we went in 2021.

Ive looked on money supermarket, some of the compare sites etc and have got it down from £700 to £400. Any tricks to make it cheaper? I know if you book flights at certain times it’s more affordable - is there the same thing with car hire or do I accept at this stage that this will be the cost?

I think they just get more expensive, so book early.

Ah okay. I was hopeful it might be like flights where where is a sweet spot when they get cheaper before getting more expensive again!

Car hire is more expensive because a lot of car hire firms sold off some of their cars during Covid and now there's a shortage of hire cars.

I agree, hiring a car is prohibitively expensive nowadays. We try and avoid it if possible. One thing we've done in France if this is a possibility is hire a car from Super U (I think Carrefour do it too, but I might be wrong about that). Obviously you pick it up from the local Super U rather than the airport, but if you can get there/make it work it was far, far cheaper than anything else last summer.

Rhanks, hadn’t heard of Super U, will look in to that. If we were going for longer than a week we’d possibly drive ourselves but it’s not worth if for the length of time we’re away, plus flights are pretty cheap to the location.

You can sometimes find cars in out of the way places for less - a friend got a good last-minute deal on a car at Christmas in a town that would have been half an hour on the train from the airport, then 20 mins in a taxi (we live in France).

Also if your destination is near any country borders check deals in adjacent countries. Double check you can then take the car back to France but it's not usually a problem in Europe.

If you're a Costco member they sometimes have good deals on car hire.

The price can vary quite a lot depending on where you’re picking up from. We’re going to the south of France in august and car hire was £250 for a week picking up from Toulouse airport and it was about £450 if we’d flown into Beziers.

Have you tried Auto Europe? I've been using them for years, they're always cheaper than other websites. I'm looking myself atm mind and i've noticed that even with them the prices are much higher than they used to be!

Intermarché also do car hire as well as SuperU and Carrefour.
I hired a Clio from Carrefour recently and it was 200€ for a week. They took a 1200€ deposit against my credit card.

I dont know specifically about France but last year in Greece we hired a car from a very reputable company for €25 per day In May. I recommended to my friend who was visiting in August and it had jumped to €80 per day! So there may be something in the time of year with it, just like flights.

Drive instead of fly? Just booked a ferry for £79.50 return, petrol is cheaper in France than here. Overnight hotels can be cheap (look at small places)

I’ll look at Costco and the supermarkets. The flights are really reasonable so we’d really like to fly if possible as although it’s the Dordogne and therefore doable I’d really appreciate not having to drive it.

Something else to look at is an annual insurance policy for Hire Cars - so you don't have to pay their expensive short term one. We have found most reputable firms accept it but obviously have the convo with your chosen firm before buying etc

booomg from the UK - I find holiday extras cheapest.

other method I’ve used a lot it to vpn to the country and book on a local site in local currency save me nearly £500 in Canada and halved the price I paid in Lanzarote.

also sometimes it’s worth booking via the airline - we got caught out in Tours because flight very late and all the car hires except Ryanair’s partner had closed.

we ended up taxi to hotel and taxi to hire car location in the morning - they did reimburse me the taxi costs - so keep receipts

also take out separate CDW insurance don’t use the hire company.

We paid £30 for a week in Portugal in January was 10 times that in season

Try the car rental company Virtuo. We hired a Mercedes A-class for about £25 a day in Italy when Virtuo first launched. Ridiculously, it was the same price for a Mercedes A-class from Virtuo, than it was for a fiat 500 from Sixt or Hertz. Would highly recommend - plus they do promo codes from time to time - e.g. giving £30 off at the moment which is higher than usual: https://refer.govirtuo.com/christopherg-1161n

The nice plus is that you simply unlock their cars with your phone - so you avoid all the stress of going up to a foreign desk where they try to pressurise you into buying insurances etc. The only downside is they're not in all the places the big rental companies are.