Car Rental Codes for Hawaii
 

Headed for the Big Island next week. Anybody got some good car rental codes to share?

I've been doing a lot of preliminary checking and despite great claims about super discounts a lot of places, by far the best prices I've found so far were with Costco -- Budget.

Costco rates include an additional driver. Their rates were lower than Entertainment Bk or AAA discounts for our longterm Kauai rentals.

I also use Costco, and this time Avis had the best rates. I usually go with Alamo and Thrifty, though. You can also check Priceline if the rates seem high.

Check Discount Hawaii Car Rental also--I usually have good luck with them. http://www.discounthawaiicarrental.com/

I went to that Discount Hawaii site, but left it when you have to fill out an actual reservation form each time to get a quote for each place or time. And then they email a price to you. No thanks, I'm already getting enough spam from other requests I've made. But meanwhile their listed base prices alone on the three columns where they list prices were higher than the base prices I was getting from Costco. So unless that first column comes out lower, I didn't see the point.

For the record, I have used them many times and have never received any spam from them. And I usually am just going to one island and know my dates so that eliminates multiple emails. So Patrick, I can see your objection to their process. They did save me over $100 on our recent 2 week rental on the Big Island.

Per someone else's suggestion on this site.

http://www.islandair.com/

Scroll to the "rental car discount" section. Then click on the rental company of your choice. I found a good rate at Thrifty.

thanks, just saved $65 on a rental!!

This really is fascinating. I have submitted to the DiscountHawaii site to see what price they offer. (And I misspelled my name to see if I do get spam, martym.)
But meanwhile I had only looked at Costco's Budget site, not Avis, assuming Avis would be higher. So I went back and this is what I found:

Same dates, smallest car possible:
10 days on Big Island: Costco Budget total -- $313, Costco Avis total --$ 289. (I then did a link from a hotel site for discounts and found Dollar for $ 288. Dollar direct which I usually find is wonderful was way high! But I did another hotel link for discounts with Avis and they were a whole lot higher than Costco's Avis.

1 week on Maui: Costco Budget total -- $174, Costco Avis total -- $ 243. So Avis and Budget completely reversed each other between the two islands. How odd.

I'll let you know what kind of comparison I get from the DiscountHawaii site. They say they email a proposal within 8 hours. But clearly you can't make any guesses about what discount might be best until you try all of them for the same cars and dates. And of course, what rate you get today may not be the same tomorrow or certainly not next month!

I often try Orbitz first to see if something sticks out in the low price department, then check the individual companies, then check Costco.

My recent Avis/Costco rental was just under $400 for 16 days, but I had made the reservation much earlier, and it subsequently went up.

Since car rentals are fully cancelable with no penalties, I may make an early reservation, and then see if I can get a better deal.

I think all the companies are fine on the Big Island, although once with a Priceline reservation I waited an hour in line at Hertz.

Well, I got my confirmation back from DiscountHawaii. I sure don't like their system. You don't get a quote, but a full scale reservation with confirmation number, etc. Now I need to cancel it, but it doesn't tell how to do that. I'm just replying to their emailed quote and telling them to cancel it. Since I haven't given a credit card number, I guess I'm fine.

Their lowest rate was with Alamo and for the same 10 days on Big Island was $312. That's $23 more than Costco's Avis quote and $24 more than the hotel link Dollar discount quote.

I normally use Dollar or Hertz because I am a member and getting the car is less of a hassle but always go to orbitz or kayak.com to check all rates. I found that Hertz had some good rates for April in Hawaii (they are almost always higher in other parts of the US).

NeoPatrick: Yes, that should do it. I've dealt with them a few times & had no difficulty canceling by reply email.
...and I never got spam from them either.

Thanks all for your input.

We already had a reservaton with Alamo, with an AARP discount. Went back & repriced Alamo with Costco & found the original price was better, so I'm sticking with that. However, I've had these reservations for a while, and timing often seems to have a great deal to do with car rental prices. I think that at any given time, everyone else's strategies might have worked as well.