If you need a rental car during your summer vacation, you don’t have to dig deep into your pockets this year. Current evaluations of the portals Check24 and billiger-mietwagen.de for the German Press Agency show significantly lower prices in most holiday destinations than a year ago. On average, prices for the 20 most popular destinations fell by 18 percent within a year, according to data from Check24. However, they are still above the pre-corona level.
The two portals found significant declines in Spain, among other places, where Check24 determined a decline of 34 percent, and billiger-mietwagen.de a minus of 16 percent. For Italy it is 17 and 16 percent, in Greece 27 and 18 percent and in Portugal 8 and 12 percent. France also fell with 9 and 14 percent, respectively, as did the UK with 9 and 4 percent.
Croatia with the biggest discount
However, the strongest reduction in price was measured in Croatia, where Check24 sees a minus of 47 percent and billiger-mietwagen.de of 22 percent. For the USA, the portals provide contradictory information. Check24 sees a price drop of 16 percent, while cheaper rental cars see an increase of 6 percent. They are close together again when it comes to rental cars in Germany: Price reductions of 11 and 10 percent were determined here.
The differences between the portals are due, among other things, to the fact that the evaluations are based on bookings by the respective visitors and the evaluated booking periods and the evaluation periods do not entirely match.
In the past two years, rental cars have been significantly more expensive than before Corona. The high price level arose because many providers had drastically reduced their fleets at the beginning of the pandemic. When travel restrictions were lifted, supply difficulties from automakers made it difficult for them to replenish their inventories, or with significantly lower discounts on the vehicles, which pushed up prices.
