Good car rental deals can be hard to find especially if you are only searching in limited places. However, doing some more research can bring about some reasonable savings you may not have found otherwise. You shouldn’t give name brand much recognition when renting a car – a Ford Fusion from Enterprise is the same as a Ford Fusion from anywhere else. Discount rental cars are actually easier to find than you might think.
If you are willing to put in more time and research, you will turn out much more hidden deals on hiring cars than you would have ever expected. There are always common considerations a rental company will take when renting you a car such as your age, and your licence but depending on the company, these may have less impact than others.
Check out our tips on how to find discount rental cars for any trips you may need to take!
Major Booking Sites
While many of the available options outlined below have the ability to outplay the big sites, the major booking sites like Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz are still the best places to start your search. Whenever appropriate, searching “Flight and Car” together, or better still “Flight, Hotel and Car,” will enable you to get into the universe of travel packages with lots of discounts. They can be surprisingly competitive.
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Aggregators
Over the past few years, aggregator sites such as Kayak.com were mostly good for renting airline flights, although some travelers used them for much more than just finding good deals on flights. The times are changing, though. Aggregators such as Kayak and CarRentals.com can probably be the best places to find out the range and the location of the best car rental deals; the amount of car rental rates you have access to is quite impressive.
Kayak also allows you to filter results by using the price range and also has options that include an automatic transmission and unlimited distance. They also permit you to open up your search to consist of off-airport rental companies, where savings can be substantial.
Discount Codes and Coupons
You might have noticed that most of the rental car companies always want to know if you have a special discount code. But, what is a special discount code is and where does one get these codes from? You don’t need to panic as the codes can be found on sites where there are discount rental cars codes and a new deal is posted every week. Additionally, some websites with “secret discount codes” and online coupons have cropped up all over:
- DealLocker.com
- RetailMeNot.com
- KeyCode.com
- DealTaker.com
By just simply using Google to search for “Avis promo code” or “Hertz discount code” can also bring about productive results.
Buy Direct
Finally, you will always get the best discount rental cars if you are booking directly from the car rental company’s website. Together with price ranges and special discount codes you can visit them personally after checking the aggregators and coupon sites, as a visit to the car rental company’s own reservations page is not only important but also well worth your time, as very few of your options will practically produce a lower price.
When you receive a rate quote, you should make sure that you are not missing some of the hidden costs of car rentals, like airport concession fees, sales tax, and also an automatically applied insurance. According to a recent study by Travelocity found out that major U.S. airports attached on an average of 25.8 percent of your overall bill in local and state taxes. It may even be worth your time to taxi as far as the nearest car rental company and rent from there to avoid these taxes. A car model will always be the same, regardless of where you rent it. As such, there’s always money to be saved by increasing your horizons while making a car rental reservations — if you simply know where to look.
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Posted on May 18, 2023