Add-ons could drive up holiday car hire by £500
THE cost of hiring a car for your summer holidays is accelerating along with everything else, and Brits can expect to pay more than £1,000 a week once extras are added.
Hiring a car costs twice as much as before the pandemic, but the real shock comes when you pick your motor up at the desk.
Rental companies pile on extras, lifting the average cost of hiring a compact VW Golf from £652 at booking to £1,111 when you pick it up.
Geneva, Switzerland, is the most expensive place to rent a car, at £933 for a week, or £1,497 with all the extras. Crete, Faro, Dubrovnik, Nice and Milan are also pricey, costing around £1,200 with extras.
Turkey and Germany are the cheapest places to hire this summer.
Extras includes things such as additional driver cover, a satnav, child’s car seat, 40 litres of petrol and most expensive of all, an “excess waiver policy”.
This spares you paying the first part of any claim for a bump, knock or scratch. Without this insurance, you could pay up to £2,000, even if the accident was not your fault.
Yet this typically costs between £10 and £15 per day, which could add up to almost £150 over one week.
You can drive the cost down by purchasing a stand-alone excess waiver policy from a specialist insurer. These tend to be cheaper and offer better protection.
Insurers worldwideinsure.com, cover4rentals.com and icarhireinsurance.com offer excess waiver insurance.
ICarhireInsurance founder Ernesto Suarez said: “The savings you can make if you buy insurance in advance and take a satnav and child car seat with you can be considerable.”