Tuesday, March 20, 2012

A shortage of rental cars in Easter Week is expected

A shortage of rental cars for the Easter holidays is expected again as a consequence of important companies's closedown of the sector because of the crisis.

Days pass fast, and by leaps and bounds approach one more year the first holidays of this year 2012, the Easter Halidays Week, beginning this year on Thursday the 5th of April. Because this is a very short vacation, a lot of visitors, most of them foreign people, prefer to come by plane or train and once arrived in destination, would like to rent a car.


Up to date we could see really low prices for car hire. As a tradition, many of the foreign customers have reserved their cars with a few months in advance, in order to be sure that will have a confirmed reservation and at the same time to get the best prices available. For example until only 2 weeks ago we could book a car hire at Alicante airport for less than 100 euros per week.

However, as dates are closer to the Easter Week prices begin to increase. For example now we can hire a car in Murcia from 130 euros and everything points that prices will increase as Easter holidays aproches.
But why do the prices increase?
As we already know the big majority of car hire companies renew the cars of the fleet constantly and as soon as the low season arrives they sell most of the vehicles, keeping the right number of cars for the winter season.
This year the economic situation is very dificult and finding finansation it is now a real challange for most of the companies. Beeing in this situation the companies can not renovate their fleet of vehicles. This way the big majority of car hire companies will have to resign with buying a lot less vehicles that the normally acquire buy this time.

As well is very important to point that important companies of the sector have suspended its activity as a consequence of the financial crisis in which Spain is immersed.

Conclusively, there are less car hire companies and the ones that support the pressure will a minor availability of cars for hire. This situation involves a shortage of fleet in curcial seasons like Easter Week and summer, besides a predictable rise of prices by this time.

How does this affects the travelers?
When the number of vehicles is very low, the companies have no other choice but to increase prices and many times the ones that makes last minute reservations will have to pay very high prices. This is all the way round than in a normal situation, when the last minute bookings haves special discounts.

The ones that have decided to rent their car until today, can say that they have paid a really low price for the Easter holidays. The ones that want to rent a car, it will be advisable to make theis booking now, and so will be sure they will pay a moderate price and at the same time being sure that they will have a car hire for those dates.

What about you? Are you going to risk and not hire a car until the last moment?

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