Shortage of vehicles
Up to 150 percent surcharge: rental car prices are rising, especially in popular holiday destinations
Note on a rental station in Cala Ratjada on Mallorca: Vacationers have to expect higher rental car prices this season.
© Imago Images
Rental cars are significantly more expensive than before Corona. At the moment, it’s not just the fall holidays to blame, but also problems in the auto industry.
Car rental1 If you rent a car during the autumn holidays, you have to dig deep into your pockets. The prices are well above the level before Corona, as evaluations by the portals Billiger-mietwagen.de and Check24 show. The reasons are the increased demand, the aftermath of the Corona crisis and the lack of chips.
Billiger-mietwagen.de has calculated surcharges of around 40 percent compared to 2019 for the travel period October in typical travel countries. In Spain and Italy in particular, rental cars have become more expensive with surcharges of more than 80 percent. In Germany, the plus of a good 32 percent is less but still significant.
Check24 reports even higher surcharges: Here, the difference was calculated for calendar week 40, which has just ended, and is a whopping 78 percent compared to 2019. The comparison portal also sees particularly large differences in Spain and Italy with 151 and 131 percent surcharges, respectively. For Germany, it calculates a 93 percent increase in prices.
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Check24 also compared the current situation with the prices four weeks ago, i.e. outside the autumn holidays. Here the increase is only five percent on average, in some countries such as Italy there are even declines. In Germany the plus is twelve percent.
High demand meets shortage of vehicles
Apparently it is less the autumn holidays than a generally high price level for rental cars that is leading to the increases compared to 2019. Even if the portals report that there is currently high demand.
Sixt boss Alexander Sixt points in this direction: “Regardless of the current autumn holiday season, people’s mobility behavior is approaching the pre-crisis period again,” he says. “The high demand continues to meet a shortage of available rental cars.” Therefore, one currently sees “occasionally an increased price level for rental cars”.
Sixt sees the low number of vehicles on offer due to the chip crisis and reduced production capacities as the reasons for the ongoing shortage. On the other hand, the rental car fleets were reduced in size during the Corona crisis. However, Sixt has recently been buying heavily and expanding its fleet again. In the second quarter alone, 70,900 vehicles were added.