Choosing the best Car Hire for your skiing holiday
Having just returned from our annual ski holiday I can safely say that choosing the best car hire deal was the hardest thing of all! The main question wasn’t just ‘which site shall I book through?’, but also included:
Will I be charged for snow chains?
Will I have to pay extra for winter tyres?
How much will the excess be?
Will my skis/ snowboard and luggage fit in the car?
Now of course the effort of finding the right hire car deal is massively outweighed by the freedom it gives you to drive to different resorts, easily pop to the supermarket, carry more luggage (plus skis/ board!) and be in control of when YOU want to leave for the airport!
So here are our top 5 tips to getting the best from you Skiing holiday car hire-
- Book through a reputable site that clearly states any additional charges that may occur. We used AutoEurope.co.uk as we not only found them to be cheaper than the competition but was impressed by their customer care, we’ve also used Rhinocarhire.com and again been impressed.
- Confirm with the car hire company whether you have to pay any ‘winterization fee’ (for winter tyres, snow chains etc). You can find out more about this here.
- Find out the insurance excess and decide before you go if you want to reduce it. For this trip we paid £18 with
direct-carexcess.co.uk to reduce our excess down to zero; this saved us over £330 compared to using Europcar option. - Work out the volume of luggage you plan to take with you. You may think you need an estate car but actually a compact will do just fine!
- If they offer you a free car upgrade at the airport, take it! On this trip were offered an upgrade but nearly turned it down as we thought we would have to pay extra, however it turned out they had a bigger car that suited us better (it had extra room for our luggage/ snowboards so our baby wasn’t so cramped!) so kindly let us have it.