Book car rentals early to stay ahead of rate increases

I made a big, although correctable, mistake last month while planning a weekend ski trip to a resort 70 miles from Denver. After booking airfare and accommodations, I dawdled on renting an SUV, which I figured I would need for snow country.

By the time I priced it, the cheapest three-day SUV rental from Denver’s airport totaled nearly $300, including taxes and fees. That was more than either my lodge stay or the lowest round-trip LAX-Denver airfare I found. And I would still have to buy gasoline.

Moral: Shop for the car before you book a nonrefundable airfare. (Or do what I did for that February weekend: Book a round trip to the resort on a shuttle service for $92 -- less than the taxes and fees on some SUV rentals.)

It’s never made much sense to rent a car at the last minute because there’s usually no penalty for canceling. The longer you wait, the fewer the cars.

You’ll soon have a new reason to budget early for your rental car: Avis, Budget, Hertz and the other majors are revving up for a rate increase.

Starting Feb. 15, a car rented from the biggest U.S. companies will cost an average of $5 more per day and $20 more per week. If it sticks, it will be the first across-the-board increase, after several sputtering attempts, in two years.

To put things in perspective: You’ll still pay less, on average, than in early 2002. That’s when companies last raised rates, expecting travel to recover strongly from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It didn’t.

In early 2003, jitters over the Iraqi conflict, SARS and the economy forced down prices. Only recently did car rental rates approach 2002 levels, said Jon LeSage, vice president of Abrams Travel Data Services in Long Beach.

The upswing is the result of increased demand.

“Leisure [travel] has really bounced back incredibly,” said Chris Payne, spokesman for Thrifty Car Rental. Business travel is up too, although not to pre-9/11 levels, he added.

Another factor: The tough travel climate in the last two years thinned the ranks of competitors, giving the majors more leverage to raise rates.

“We’ve seen hundreds of car rental operators ... that aren’t in the business any more,” LeSage said. The swing to Internet booking has also hurt these small independents, which get bypassed by big travel sites, he said.

“In the long run,” LeSage predicted, “there will be fewer rental car companies, and rates will be higher.”

Here are some strategies to keep your car rental from stripping your wallet:

* Reserve early: “You never want to get off the plane and go to the counter,” Thrifty’s Payne said. “You’ll get terrible rates.” Companies want to encourage advance booking, which helps them manage fleets, so they give price breaks for it, he said.

You may even save if you phone the rental counter right after arriving, rather than just walking up to it, because that call may qualify as an “advance reservation.”

Prices may increase as cars get scarce, and latecomers risk having fewer or no vehicles to choose from.

* Compare prices: This used to be tough on Internet sites, which posted daily base rates, without taxes and fees. Then www.travelocity.com introduced “total prices,” which included these add-ons and totaled them for the rental period. Now competitors www.expedia.com and www.orbitz.com also show total prices.

Each site works differently. Travelocity and Orbitz display the totals on charts for easy comparison across rental companies and car class. With Expedia, you must click on each car choice to get the total.

These sites are great time-savers, but they’re not infallible. They tend to list nationwide chains and omit small, independent rental car operations, which may offer cheaper rates, LeSage said. You also may get a better rate by phone or even in person. As with hotels, pricing can be unpredictable.

Barry Branagan of Thousand Oaks was surprised last month when a rental clerk at the Las Vegas airport offered him a car for $38 total for two days after he had booked it on the Internet for $29 per day. Branagan took the deal and didn’t ask questions, so he didn’t know whether it was a mistake.

Travel agents may also be helpful in alerting you to discounts, as may your hotel. Some hotels have special deals with nearby rental outlets; as a bonus, you may avoid the hotel’s garage fee.

* Make a “blind date”: Discount travel Web sites such as www.hotwire.com and www.priceline.com, where you don’t learn the company’s name until you have booked its product, can save you money.

On Priceline, you bid on rentals; Hotwire claims to offer lower rates. Just make sure you’ve shopped around enough to know what’s a deal and what’s not before you bid or book on these sites.

* Get out of the airport: An array of extra taxes and fees is typically added to rental cars at or near airports.

The usual rule: Rent in town and save.

Among the fattest markups, Travelocity found last year in a survey of 100 airports, were in Texas, where the difference between the quoted rental rate at airports and the total with taxes and fees averaged more than 50%. The spread at California airports, by contrast, averaged 11.5%, it found.

* Avoid add-ons: “They’ve got all these gimmicks and games to get people to spend more money,” traveler Branagan said of car rental agents, echoing a common complaint. “You feel like you’re being hustled.”

One person’s gimmick may be another’s necessity. “There are some people who don’t have car insurance,” Thrifty’s Payne said. “We have to offer it.”

But you don’t have to buy it if your regular insurance or credit card covers you in a rental car.

Two more savers: Fill the tank before returning the car (to avoid being charged for fuel) and return it on time (to avoid charges for an extra day or half-day).

Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.