In the present day is April Idiot’s Day and usually we submit a foolish joke, however sadly this submit is not any joke. As extra vacationers are coming to Hawaii, they’re discovering that rental vehicles are scarce and outrageously costly.
How costly are rental vehicles now? In line with a KHON section, which we’ve embedded on the backside of this text, they report discovering leases for $600 per day and a few even larger! Wow!
We did a fast search on Hawaii Low cost Automotive Rental for a rental automotive picked up on the Kona Airport in April. It took us a number of date searches to even discover availability. Once we lastly discovered out there vehicles, we have been shocked on the “least costly” worth — $239 per day for an economic system automotive. Then, we checked for this similar random April date on Maui to seek out the bottom charge is $325 per day for a compact automotive. These each day charges are extra like weekly charges in pre-COVID instances.
We additionally verify for vehicles from Costco Journey. Once more, it was tough to seek out availability. Right here’s a screenshot of a seek for a automotive on Maui for April 15, 2021.
The scarcity of vehicles is because of rental automotive firms promoting off most of their fleet when demand fell drastically in 2020. Rebuilding the fleet to fulfill demand is a sluggish course of.
Usually, Expedia presents a fairly whole lot if you happen to e-book resort and rental automotive collectively. After all, it’s usually dearer so as to add the automotive to the resort reserving, however normally by combining the 2 collectively, you find yourself with a greater deal reasonably than reserving independently. Wow, not a lot with this automotive scarcity! We did a fast seek for a Maui resort solely reserving and a resort plus automotive reserving for a similar date of April 15. For comparability sake solely, we used The Westin Maui Resort & Spa, Ka’anapali for only one evening arriving April 15, 2021. Listed here are the screenshots.
Resort Solely
Resort + Automotive
The distinction in including the automotive will increase the associated fee by $777 per evening! That’s gorgeous!
What must you do in mild of this Hawaii rental automotive scarcity?
This rental automotive scarcity could also be round for some time as demand will increase and rental automotive firms can’t rapidly restock their fleet. Right here some recommendation:
– Ebook a rental automotive to your trip as quickly as doable. Don’t wait till the final minute. Rental automotive bookings are usually very simple to cancel. So, e-book your automotive and proceed to periodically verify for decrease charges and higher choices up till the time of your journey.
– Verify trip package deal pricing with journey companies as they might have contracts/relationships for precedence with automotive rental firms.
– When you have a Costco membership, verify Costco Travel pricing. They have a tendency to have the perfect charges for resort and automotive packages. We’ve personally booked a number of Hawaii trip packages with them. Family and friends have, too. When you recall, last week, we shared an excellent Costco Journey package deal for the Fairmont Orchid on Hawaii Island. Final week we crunched the numbers for a keep that labored out to be round $335 per evening for a luxurious resort lodging and full-sized rental automotive. We thought it was a cut price on the time. In mild of those rental automotive shortages/charges, that’s a fair greater deal now.
– Contemplate non-traditional alternate options exterior of the big, nationwide automotive rental firms. Some examples:
- Turo is described as a VRBO or airBnB for vehicles. (We’ve not personally used this selection, however my sister has used this app for a automotive rental in Dallas and had a very good expertise with it.)
- Hui automotive share (Oahu-only)
– Contemplate your choices for public transportation in Hawaii.
