What agencies are available?

The major car rental agencies are Hertz, Avis and Enterprise, although not all agencies are available in every location.  If you’re traveling to a large city like Chicago or New York City, there might even be rental agencies available that you’ve never even heard of.  Having a list of the rental car agencies operating in your destination will help in your search for the best deal.

Flexibility

How flexible are your travel plans?  Are they set in stone or do you have some leeway built in to your trip?  If you’re traveling on business, you probably don’t have much flexibility in terms of time, date or pickup location, which could limit some of the rental car deals available to you.  But if you do have some flexibility with your traveling plans, you can save quite a bit of money by just adjusting your schedule a little.

The search

If the rental agencies you’ve listed have websites, start there.  Find out what their prices are without going through any of the travel booking websites like Expedia.com or Orbitz.com.  Find out when their weekend rates start and end.  Depending on the type of car you’d like to rent, the rates could be higher or lower if any portion of your travel includes the weekend.  For example, if your trip will occur Tuesday through Friday, it could be only a matter of hours when it comes to saving money.  If the agency’s weekend rate begins at noon and it’s a higher rate than the weekday rate, schedule your return before noon if your plans allow.

Contact your credit card company

Renting a car requires using a credit card for payment.  Since you already have to use it, call your credit card company and see if they have any member specials for renting cars.  You’ll also want to ask them if they offer collision coverage on rentals.  If they do, then you only have to purchase liability for your rental.  For example, American Express is one of the companies who do supply this when you use your card for the rental car.  You may also be able to cash in credit card rewards points and buy gift certificates for the major rental car agencies.

Are we done yet?

If you’re happy with one of the deals you’ve found in your search, go ahead and book your rental.  But if you’d like to see if you could do even better, call the rental car agencies.  Many times, the representative you’re talking to can offer you deals that aren’t advertised anywhere else.  It may seem intimidating to call the agency, but this simple call can save you lots of money when booking your rental car.

Where will you be driving most?

If you’ll be doing most your driving in town, the size of the car you rent will be primarily a personal choice.  On the other hand, if you’ll be driving in the countryside or on uneven terrain, you’ll probably want to rent an SUV.  After all, what could be worse than going out on your vacation and ending up stuck in the middle of nowhere?

What size will you need?

Though there aren’t many sizes available in SUVs, you’ll have quite a few choices if you choose to rent a car.  Rental agencies typically offer seven sizes for cars, ranging from economy to luxury.  The economy size usually has a suitability rating for two adults and two children, holding only two small bags of luggage.  The larger luxury sizes will hold up to five adults with trunk space for three large and three small bags of luggage.

Traveling out of country?

There are a few other things you should consider if you’re traveling to another country, as other countries tend to have different views on cars then we do in the US.  Here, normally the standard is, “the bigger the better.”   In other countries, that isn’t always the case.  You’ll have to take into consideration road congestion and limited parking space – both of which are frequent concerns in other countries.

If you are traveling to Europe, fuel economy and fewer parking spaces are a major concern. Fortunately, though gas prices are twice as much there as they are here, most of the cars you can rent have much better gas mileage then you’ll see in the USA. 

Automatic transmissions aren’t always standard!

Another thing you must consider if you’re traveling to Europe is that cars don’t automatically come with automatic transmissions, and that the shifting is usually done on your left side instead of the right.  So if you don’t know how to drive a manual transmission or don’t feel comfortable driving from the right side of the car, you’ll need to book your rental ahead of time.  Very few rental cars in Europe come with automatic transmissions, so they’ll be booked up much faster than the others.

Size isn’t the same in all countries.

One last consideration if you’ll be renting a car in another country is size.  In Europe, what we would consider to be a compact car is actually considered to be a mid-size car.  In the USA and Canada, a compact car has a suitability rating for seating two adults and two children comfortably, while in Europe, that same car would be rated for seating 5 adults comfortably.  That’s a big difference – especially if you’re traveling with a group of adults.  If you need to have more room in your rental and aren’t sure which size would be right, ask the rental agents – they can go over all the choices with you and help you compare them to rental cars in the USA.