Car hire problems in Spain

 

As explained in an earlier post Madrid Alicante – The easy way the summer has seen the author making regular trips to Alicante. Whilst in Alicante one stays at one of the modern holiday home developments that are all along the Costa Blanca. Its a nice environment in which to relax and certainly has an international flavour with Dutch, German, Scandinavian and English neighbours.

 

Catching up with the family from Manchester who holiday in the villa next door each year they explained that this year they didn’t bother with a hire car. Looking on from the outside it appeared to be a sensible economizing measure during the “crisis” however one was quickly corrected as the father explained that they had asked for quotes from the local companies but these had come in 3 times more expensive than 2008! Needless to say one was left speechless that Spanish hire car firms could be trying to jack up prices at a time when clients are fewer than in previous years (latest figures show a 9-12% drop in foreign tourists in the region).

 

Returning to Madrid a little digging into the situation has been done and it appears that the situation has come about through the simplest of all business concepts: the law of “Supply and demand”.

 

It appears that the major hire car providers in Spain predicted the 2009 fall off in foreign tourists towards the end of the 2008 season and decided to reduce their fleet sizes. That’s good forward planning and “cutting ones cloth to measure” means that there would be few unoccupied cars so lowering rental costs. Things are all well and good up to this point but instead of reducing the available fleet of rental cars the companies instead decided to mitigate any risk by slashing capacity dramatically! This has led to demand from tourists traveling to Spain far outnumbering the number of available hire cars. So critical is the situation that its even managed to make the BBC news in the UK: BBC article

 

So what solution exists for the visitor to Spain? The last thing anyone should do is wait until arriving at the destination airport to hire their vehicle where, more often than not, you’ll be confronted with an empty lot or highly inflated prices. The simplest way to get around these problems is to give them to someone else. Ie make your Car hire Spain provider work for you by reserving in advance!

 

Thankfully Madrid itself has been spared the worst of the hire car problems with the city emptying out during July and August. There are however minor questions over the availability of certain models due to their having been repositioned to the coast to meet the summer demand. Check out the article on the main site regarding Madrid car hire for details on companies offering hire cars in Madrid.