Is it better to hire a car at the airport?

When it comes to car hire, whether you’re going on holiday or returning home after a long period abroad, you’ll always find that it’s better to book in advance rather than organising it at the airport when you land. There are a number of reasons for that, but most of them can be boiled down to what we call the three Cs: cost, convenience and choice.

But before we examine the benefits of booking your car hire in advance, let’s go back to a time when you couldn’t! 

Before the internet

Before the advent of the internet, if you wanted the use of a hire car when on holiday, almost the only thing you could do was head to the hire company’s desk at the airport when you landed, and hope you were near enough to the front of the queue to actually get something worthwhile. And with everyone trying to do the same thing at the same time, if you weren’t near the front of the queue, then chances were that you’d have a long wait, and probably not much choice when you got there.

Although car hire companies do still tend to have a desk at major airports, it now tends to be only to help those who have already booked, or to deal with general enquiries.

The Three Cs of Car Hire: Cost, Convenience and Choice

Cost

Perhaps the biggest advantage for the customer who books his or her car hire in advance is that it will nearly always be cheaper than arranging it at the airport on arrival.

This doesn’t just apply to car hire – in all kinds of transactions, if you need something and you need it now, you’ll nearly always have to pay more. For example, if you regularly use the train, you’ll know that you’ll always get a better price if you can book well ahead rather than on the day you want to travel. 

But when you search for your car hire online, you’ve got a better chance of getting the best deal, because you can compare prices from a wider choice of providers – in the airport, you’d have to go from desk to desk and back again to nail the best value. And the earlier you can book, the better the deal you’re likely to find.

But there’s more to it than that, because it also costs less for the car hire company to do as much as possible online, and that allows them to pass their savings on to you, the customer. For starters, they need fewer staff on their desk at the airport. Meanwhile, buying or hiring the land needed to keep a good supply of vehicles even close to a London airport would be a huge expense in this day and age. Vehicles booked in advance can be kept well off site and only brought in when customers are due to land. 

Convenience

When you book your car hire in advance, everything is arranged before you leave home, so when you arrive at your destination, all you have to do is collect your vehicle and go. A good provider will even be able to bring the car you’re hiring to your terminal for when you land. Our popular ‘meet and greet’ service does just that, meaning that wherever you’re flying into in the London area, we can be there waiting, ready to see you on your way.

Book at the time you arrive, however, and you’ll have to make all your decisions while you’re probably tired and wanting nothing more than to get on with the rest of your journey. That could mean everything from deciding which vehicle is the best for your needs and best for your budget to sorting out payment and deciding what extras you might want included. And once you’ve done all that, there’s likely to be another long wait while you’re either taken to collect the vehicle or someone can bring it to you.

Choice

If you’re trying to book your car hire at an airport desk, then you probably won’t have that wide a range of vehicles to pick from. Book online, on the other hand, and you’re likely to have a full range of sizes, styles and prices on offer, so that you can take the time to make sure that your final choice is the best possible vehicle for your needs.

At UK Car & Van Rental, we can offer everything from compact cars, roomy estates and prestige vehicles to SUVs, minibuses and transit vans. So, whatever you’re going to be doing with your vehicle and however many people you’re going to be doing it with, you can be sure that we’ll have the perfect solution on hand.

If you’re flying into any of the major airports in and around London and need to hire a top-quality vehicle at an affordable price, we can help. Everything we do is based on giving you the convenience, the choice and the cost savings that together add up to the perfect vehicle hire.

Get in touch with the team at UK Car & Van Rental if you have any questions, or browse our huge selection of modern, high-quality vehicles and book your car or van hire now.