About car rental when air traffic is down

The caos during last days in air traffic has raised several transportation questions, which often concerns also car rental services. Europcar tries to look into some of those questions and maybe you could get an idea or two out of it to help you in this situation. The aim is also to give some backround information about how car rental works for better orientation in this matter.

One way rentals are cheap or even without any additional costs only when the demand exists on both sides. In countries, where there are several airports, o-ways between them are often w/o any additional charge, because the probability that the owner office has to go after it's car is quite small against getting this car back with regular customer. The same goes for nabouring countries airport cities. In other cases, owner country has to calculate the costs, which arise with sending somebody to collect the car (fuel, business trip, overnights etc).

Understandably, the more far is destination point, the more expensive is o-way cost. But those o-ways are not totally w/o limitation as to some remote destinations such calculations simply doesn't make sense. In Estonia the farest destination for o-ways is by default Warsawa, but of course there is always room for special agreements.

Foreign cars in Estonia are always possible to rent back to so called home office. The price is decided by renting country, not the owner country. Depending on demand and offer balance it might be possible in such situation to negotiate about the o-way rate but you shouldn't presume that for instance Polish car rental towards Poland would be with special low rate. 

Rental companies have put themselves on stopsell or restricted o-ways. Especially during current crises, because fleet tends to run out over the Europe. Either there is short of cars, either the potential volume of foreign o-ways is predictably so big, that it would cause rental company big trouble. In such cases it is still a good idea to call the rental company to ask for foreign cars to arrive as those will be rented back anyway. For more expensive destinations, it might be good idea to try to combine travel companions in order to share some costs.

Many travel portals (e.g. www.trip.ee or similar), change information of cleverer possiblities of travelling between most common destinations and also keeps you updated with latest news.

Car rental won't be probably equal alternative to train or bus transport, because cannot compete with prices. Even if we would succeed in creating an info portal over all the renting companies, showing especially in such caos situations all the possible o-way rental solutions over the Europe, giving different solutions for rentals from Tallinn - to Calais or from Frankfurt - to Pärnusest, then we still cannot argue with more comfortable bus or train trip instead of hundreds of kilometers behind the driving wheel, even if the price would be competitive. Car rental effective business radius is in that sense limited. 

Summery:

Investigate about incoming foreign cars from your nearby rental office

Bargain about o-way charge of foreign cars re-rentals

If there is extra space, try to find travel companions to share costs

Keep yourself updated, read travel portals

If you can't rent to the needed destinations, maybe you can to another place which might open you some further travelling options

Sometimes it's cheaper and more convenient for a rental company to offer chaffeur service than o-way rental! It is worth asking.