While European vacationers try to avoid Airport chaos this summerEscape to car rental has become a difficult option after rental rates have risen to record levels.
Prices, which reached an all-time high in 2021, have risen to new records this year, with coastal regions in Europe particularly affected by the inflated rates, according to Bloomberg, seen by Al Arabiya.net.
Travelers in Spain, who could have rented a car for just over €20 ($20) a day before the pandemic, will have to pay at least three times that amount this summer. Italy and Croatia have also seen a price jump of more than 180 percent, according to data compiled by Check24.
Things could get worse and last-minute travelers should act quickly, advises the comparison site’s managing director, Andreas Schiffelholz.
The soaring prices indicate Europeans’ thirst for travel after the pandemic. Overnight tourism in the eurozone recovered to pre-COVID levels in May, according to Oxford Economics tourism tracking. With the beginning of the European school holidays, the number of vacationers is poised to continue rising.
The travel boom has already caused chaos at European airports. In some of the busiest hubs on the continent, there are delays on more than 60 percent of flights, and as many as 8 percent have been canceled, according to data compiled by travel agency Hopper.
In response, London Heathrow Airport set a two-month cap on daily passenger traffic and asked airlines to stop selling new summer tickets. After reducing staff at the start of the pandemic, airports and airlines have struggled to keep up with security and baggage handling, leading to long queues and piles of misplaced luggage.
Car rental companies have also shrunk during the pandemic, and many have not returned to their pre-Covid strength even as demand has recovered. For the second year in a row, a supply chain crisis fueled by a global shortage of semiconductors has curbed car production and left automakers with fewer cars to sell to rental companies.
Schiffelholz said: “Many car rental companies have downsized their fleet during the pandemic and cannot return to normal fleet sizes now with increased demand.
Among the largest leasing companies in Europe, only Avis Budget Group and Sixt SE were able to return to their 2019 fleet levels, the company reports. Europcar Mobility Group and Hertz Global – which filed for bankruptcy amid the collapse of the travel industry in 2020 – are no longer their previous size.
Some car rental companies have turned the demand rebound into windfall profits. According to Sixt co-CEO Alexander Sixt, prices won’t drop anytime soon.
“We estimate prices to be at at least that level for the greater part of 2023,” he said, adding that the costs of tourist accommodation, air travel and new vehicles have all risen in recent years, while rental car prices have been stagnant for a decade.
Nor does he expect an imminent drop in interest from vacationers. He said that despite the additional costs from higher fuel prices, “the demand forecast for this summer is not significantly reduced.”