We talk a lot about saving money on flights and hotels, but what about car rentals?! See some of our ideas below about how to save money when renting a car on vacation.
Idea #1- You can use the bank travel portals to book car rentals. You would do this just like you would if you were using the portal to book flights or hotels. It may not be considered the best use of points, but if you are looking to use up your points or have some to spare, using points toward a car rental may be a good option for you! Sometimes you can find decent deals this way and if it helps save you money, it’s a win!
Idea #2- Use Autoslash.com. This is a website where you can enter information about your upcoming travel. Autoslash will search all car rental sites for you to find the best deal. You can even have the site send you emails when better deals pop up for your travel dates. We used this initially to find a deal on a car rental, and then ended up booking directly on the car-rental site with the price found on Autoslash. Using Autoslash saved us a bunch of time in the initial search for the best deal!
Idea #3-Use Costco.com. You will need a Costco membership for this, but Costco can help you save a bunch on car rentals. My husband has a co-worker that literally signed up for a membership just to save money on his car rental in Hawaii. The co-worker realized that he was paying double what my husband and I paid for ours, so it made sense for him to get a Costco membership for that reason alone.
*One tip for using Costco is that you can check back weekly (or when you have time) to make sure to get the best price. This takes a little time, but is simple to do. It is very easy to cancel and re-book through Costco, so this has been our go-to lately!
One other tip for car rentals- We love using our favorite starter card when booking car rentals because of the car rental insurance that comes with having the card!
