Car Rental - How To Choose The Right Car Hire Company

At many popular car hire destinations in Spain like Alicante airport, Malaga or Mallorca you can book your rental car with both global and local car hire companies, but what are exactly the advantages of each one?

Many travellers prefer the peace of mind of booking with a reputable multinational like Avis, Hertz, Europcar or National in order to avoid unpleasant surprises when collecting the rental car. Funny enough most complaints we handle are usually related with cars rented from multinational companies and the most common issues received by our customer services department are questions about the insurance.

Normally rates for Spain from multinational companies include basic collision damage waiver and theft protection with an insurance excess, sometimes up to 1.500 euros, depending on the company. However, if you go through the booking process on the website of a multinational car hire company on many occasions you will find an optional and additional item called Super CDW (Super Collision Damage Waiver) which normally can be included by checking a box. With this optional item you can reduce or eliminate the insurance excess and your financial liability in case of an accident.

From our experience the rates from local car hire companies in Spain, many of them with a fleet of rental vehicles exceeding 15.000 cars do already include the Super Collision Damages Waiver, there is no insurance excess on the car hire.

If you book car hire in Malaga, Alicante or Mallorca with a multinational car rental company or any online car rental broker offering their services in Spain we strongly advise to check the insurance conditions, as the daily charge to cover the excess can be as much as 15,00 euros per day at the counter of multinational companies at Malaga airport, Palma de Mallorca or Alicante.

Other advantages of local car hire companies in Malaga and other popular tourist destinations in Spain are the much lower additional charges which apply for services like extra drivers, baby seats, airport deliveries or after hour car deliveries. Many of these additional services are free of charge or against a very low flat rate and you will end up paying a lot less.

Obviously there are also disadvantages. Due to their low-cost philosophy these companies need to optimize their fleet which requires a larger number or rentals and the chances are that you have to wait a bit longer to collect your rental car when you arrive at Malaga airport, especially on peak days, during the weekends or the holiday periods.

The petrol policy from local car hire companies occasionally differs from the one applied by multinationals. Based on the statistics of the mileage per rental agreement many local car hire suppliers consider that an average customer will spend at least one full tank of petrol during the rental period of the vehicle and customers are requested to pay for a full tank of petrol and return the car as empty as possible. Especially at popular car hire destinations like Malaga, Alicante, Granada, Madrid, Mallorca, Almeria, Murcia, Valencia, Barcelona and Gerona this may be the case. We recommend our customers to estimate their mileage and compare which option is the most economical one.