Last August we flew to Barcelona with E.Jet and booked a car from the airport through them - the price was reasonable but not rock bottom. When we arrived the other car hire companies had two or three customers but we had to stand in a queue for two and a half hours before we got our car.

This year we are keen not to repeat this experience at Malaga airport in the same busy fortnight. The very lowest price is not our priority - not standing in a quarter mile long is!

Which company would you use?

Thanks

Anyone travelled by car from Malaga airport - there must be a few of you out there? Help please!

Can it be true that none of you have hired a car from Malaga airport - or is this just too boring a question for anyone to bother answering?

jcr

It could well be that not many people here HAVE rented a vehicle at Malaga airport. Many folks arriving there I understand travel onwards to the resorts and perhaps there are buses or taxes etc laid on for them.

I was at the airport on Friday and never saw queues anywhere, including the few car rental booths I noticed. It seemed to be a very well run and organised airport.

Your question boring? Hardly. You do need to be patient though until someone comes along that can actually answer the question. I can only give you a general view of what I saw last week but I didn't rent, although I hope it somehow helps.

joe

All rental desks at Malaga Airport in August will have big queues - and even if you book with a broker, your car will still be supplied by one of the majors and you have to wait in line.
What I suggest is that you use a 'meet and greet' service offered by one of several off-site rental companies, such as http://www.tonysrentacar.com/ Their office is just outside the terminal building and a representative will meet your flight and escort you to their depot. Their rates seem good too.

We picked up a car at Malaga airport in September and had no problems. We booked through Auto Europe but I don't remember what agency they used.

It's been six years, but we used National, with very little waiting and they treated us well. We rented a Citroen.

Malaga Airport gets extremely busy at August weekends, and long lines at rental stations are very common. It may not be so bad in September or mid-week, but Friday/Saturday/Sunday find planes from all over Europe discharging 1000s of tourists, many of whom have a rental car to collect. While you may be lucky with a short line in August, I would play safe and book direct with an off-site operator who will meet you with a name sign as you come through the customs and take you directly to their depot, and hand over your car key.

Last year in April, we hired a car from Avis at Malaga airport. It took us 10 minutes to get the car. Very smoothly.

Same thing this year in Barcelona, except that at Barcelona airport, the rental car offices are just counters within the airport hall, which was very noisy.

Thank you to everybody who came up with these suggestions.

The problem in Iberian peninsula resorts (and many others around the Mediterranean, as well as a number of other European tourist destinations, like Dublin) really isn't about specific airports. And "Off site" operators can often be the worst for long queues.

The problems are:
- unlike business oriented airports, like Heathrow or Frankfurt, a huge proportion of customers use the cheapest operator they can find. Among the fripperies cheaper hirers cut out are staff sitting around doing nothing for much of the day. Another is renting too much checkin space for a business that's heavily concentrated into a few summer weekends

- customers arrive in big waves, depending on plane schedules. These waves vary massively by day and time of year. They're mostly biggest at summer weekends - but even then, there are huge slugs of the day when there's no-one arriving

- inevitably, cheaper hirers will have a geographical bias to their marketing. A business that's come to depend disproportionately on, say, Germans will see a huge peak in customers when a few planes from Dusseldorf and Munich arrive (why there's such a tendency for all planes from Britain or Germany to arrive close to each other is one of life's great mysteries). One extra 737 will swamp the ability of a hire company with just one or two checkin staff - and no room to hold any more anyway.

- a common frippery cheapos cut out is time-reducing systems (I've never encountered any of Alec's "off-site operator who will meet you with a name sign as you come through the customs and take you directly to their depot, and hand over your car key". They all hand over the key only after hours-long formfilling) A frippery almost all add is an attempt to sell you the insurance your rate excluded and a laborious explanaton of their fuel policy.

Avoiding anywhere from midday Friday to Monday midmorning makes queueing less likely. So, most of the time, is choosing more business-oriented airports (like Barcelona, as opposed to Girona), and avoiding holiday periods altogether, though neither of these are practical for many tourists. It helps to use airports less dependent on car hire (few arriving at Venice hire cars. Almost everyone arriving at Malaga does), so using airports plugged into useful public transport systems (like Pisa) might help. Sadly, though, there are only two infallible predictions:

1. The whole thing is a sweepstake.
2. You get what you pay for. Hertz and Avis cost more partly because they rent convenient checkin areas, big enough to handle extra staff and because they generally offer faster systems. El Cheapo Andaluz needs you to fill in a million forms because you're not on its frequent flyer database. And never will be, because El Cheapo Andaluz has no intention of ever expanding outside a handful of Costa airports.

flanner you have replied to spam!
This is a very old thread also lok at the other postings Sandra has made.