Rental car prices high in Spain, tourists escaping airport chaos

Thursday, July 21, 2022

European vacationers may fall prey to paying unprecedented rental car fare which has skyrocketed ever since pre-pandemic times.

This is for those who want to avoid the summer airport chaos.

The charges that have been high all through 2021 have been escalating this. This has affected Europe’s coastal regions particularly those affected by the inflated rates.

According to a data, travellers who could afford to pay a little more than 20 euros ($20) per day before the pandemic, will have to pay at least three times as much this summer.

Italy and Croatia saw price hike by more than 180% as per reports. Prices have soared as a product of post-pandemic wanderlust leading to a looming energy crisis and recession fears.

Overnight stays in the eurozone recovered to pre-COVID levels in May, according to Oxford Economics’ Tourism Tracker. With European school holidays just beginning, the number of vacationers is poised to keep climbing.

The travel resurgence has already wreaked havoc at European airports. At some of the continent’s busiest hubs, more than 60% of flights are delayed and almost 8% are being cancelled, according to data collected.

As a resistive measure to this problem, London’s Heathrow Airport has put check on the daily passenger traffic. The airlines have been asked to stop selling new summer tickets.

Rental car companies also face considerable loss during the pandemic and may have not got back to pre-COVID business even as demand rebounded.

For a second straight year, a supply-chain crisis fuelled by global semiconductor shortages curbed auto production and left carmakers with fewer vehicles to sell to rental companies.

Among Europe’s largest rental firms, only Avis Budget Group Inc. and Sixt SE were able to get back to their 2019 fleet levels, company reports show.

Europcar Mobility Group and Hertz Global Holdings Inc., which filed for bankruptcy amid the collapse of the travel industry in 2020, have yet to return to their former size.

Some rental-car firms have turned the bounce-back in demand into a profit windfall. According to Sixt’s Co-CEO, Alexander Sixt, prices aren’t going to fall anytime soon.

Costs for tourist accommodations, air travel and new vehicles have all risen in recent years, while car-rental prices have been stagnant for a decade, Sixt said.

These recent adjustments will stay.

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