"Death, taxes, airport fees: High rentals often certain"

Sunday, August 24, 2003

Death, taxes, airport fees: High rentals often certain
By Ed Perkins 
The San Francisco (CA) Chronicle


On average, travelers who rent cars at large U.S. airports pay taxes and
fees that add an additional 24 percent over the advertised base rates. 

That's according to a new survey of car rental extras for three-day rentals
at the country's 100 busiest airports. The survey was conducted by
Travelocity, one of the "big three" online travel Web sites. 

In itself, that finding is no surprise to anyone who has rented recently.
But nobody decides where to go on the basis of rental car fees. So the key
question becomes whether -- and how -- smart travelers can avoid those
exorbitant fees. And, as is so often the case, the answer is: Sometimes you
can, sometimes you can't. 

Highs and lows: "A statistician is someone who drowns wading a river that
averages three feet deep," goes the old quip, and its lesson certainly
applies to car rental fees. Actual add-on fees range from a lot less than 24
percent to a lot more. The country's worst airport is Houston
Intercontinental, where extras add a preposterous 72 percent to the bill. 

Six of the country's 10 worst airports are in Texas, with add-on percentages
ranging from 61 percent at Dallas-Fort Worth to 43 percent at El Paso. Other
cities on the top-10 dishonor roll are Cleveland (52 percent), Kansas City
(48 percent), Phoenix (48 percent) and Albuquerque (42 percent). 

At the other end of the scale, eight of 10 airports with the lowest
percentage add-on fees and taxes are in California, ranging from 8 percent
in Sacramento to 12 percent in San Diego. Syracuse (12 percent) and Buffalo
(13 percent), N.Y., round out the list of the good guys. 

What's going on here? Where rental car fees are high, they're high for two
reasons: 

-- Local taxing jurisdictions have zeroed in on rental cars as a happy
hunting ground for generating revenues. Some fees support facilities the
travelers actually use -- airport developments, mostly -- but others pay for
facilities and services the locals want but don't want to pay for in their
own taxes. 

For example, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Reno and San Antonio are all
using rental car fees to help build new sports stadiums. Boston even
assesses a small fee to pay for parking tickets other renters incur but
don't pay. 

-- Car rental companies treat as many of their expenses as possible as
extras, including expenses that are really part of the cost of doing
business. The idea is to keep the advertised base rates unrealistically low.
The cost of renting space in airport terminals, for example, is obviously a
cost that should be included in a rental company's base rates, as is the
cost of licensing the cars, but rental companies often treat them as extras.


Avoiding the gouge: Can savvy travelers get away from those high taxes by
renting off-airport, at a downtown office? Sometimes. 

When I checked three-day intermediate rentals in high-tax Houston
Intercontinental, Thrifty's base rate was $102. With extras of $55, the
total came to $157. At a downtown office, the extras were only $35, but the
base rate went up to $119, so the final cost, at $154, wasn't much
different. On the other hand, Avis' base rate at the airport was $201, plus
$71 in extras, for a total of $272. Downtown, the figures were $120 for the
rental, $24 in extras, for a total of $144. 

It seems that Thrifty is beefing up its downtown rate to keep total costs
about the same as at the airport. Given the cost to get downtown by some
other means, avoiding the airport charges makes no sense for Thrifty
renters. Avis renters, on the other hand, might well want to think about
avoiding airport rates. 

The bottom line: You can sometimes come out ahead of the game by renting
off-airport. But with the extra costs and hassles of getting downtown some
other way, renting off-airport makes sense only when the rate spread is
substantial. All too often, your best bet is to swallow those inflated fees,
no matter how irritating. You have to check with each rental to be sure.


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