CarRental.com.au allows users to compare prices for the major car rental companies in Australia. These 5 account for about 90% of total domestic car rentals. After the big 5 players Hertz, Thrifty, Avis, Europcar and Budget, there are over a thousand rental companies duking it out. These range from companies with a handful of cars to ones with 500 cars, trucks and campers. We do not currently offer a price comparison for the smaller guys as the technology is not there for us to be able to pull a live feed of their prices.
Read on for more about car rental companies in Australia or compare the 5 mentioned above and get exclusive discounts and coupons.
Differences In Service Between The Car Rental Companies
In our 20 years in the car rental industry we have seen the time taken to pick up vehicles from the big players shorten and shorten. You can now expect to be in your car within 5 minutes, even at peak hour at busy depots like Sydney Airport. This is due to paperless check-in, retaining credit cards on file, express queues and the internet allowing users to select all optional extras at time of booking.
These membership or loyalty programs are run by the car rental companies:
Each allows anyone to sign up and save their credit card, frequent flyer and other loyalty program details. Some corporate programs are only for companies of a certain size. When these members show up at the pick up location, they get to walk straight to the front of the queue and Hertz or whoever has their details on file. We encourage our users to sign up too for convenience. You should also enter your particulars in our travel profile so that we automatically pass on your details to whichever of the car rental companies you choose. You only need to add them once.
Due to the cost of the rewards themselves, Frequent Flyer points and other reward schemes are almost exclusively available from the largest companies only. At the time of writing the points you can earn are particularly generous, up to 5 Velocity points and 3 Frequent Flyer points, plus some car rental companies offer Flybuys and Air NZ Airpoints redemption. Try a booking above and you will see the points that you would accrue.
Smaller car rental operators can sometimes be cheaper, much like your local supermarket may be cheaper on some items than Woolworths. Smaller operators typically use considerably older vehicles and can discount accordingly.