Las Vegas Car Hire

[peterperkins]

I've got a couple of week in the US in September, arriving in Vegas on 16th and flying back to UK on 30th.
All flights are from the international airport.

What's the best car hire solution in the area for a solo traveller?
Pick up at airport?
Get one downtown?

I'll be doing around 1500 miles max in the two weeks.
Going to Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, Monument Valley etc so was thinking a small suv?

Google throws up loads of stuff.
Anyone got any personal recommendations. Thanks

[ChocolateFrog]

Airport.

The convenience is worth it.

[Truckosaurus]

I've always rented from the airport. I've never seemed to find meaningful discounts by renting from the locations at the hotels.

Use the household name multinationals, booked by their UK website to get the correct insurance coverage.

(Sometimes you can get decent discounts by combining the rental with your flight).

Usually a nice car (premium or luxury class) doesn't cost much more than a basic Corolla - last 2 trips I've had a hemi powered 300c and an Audi A4 Quattro.

The other thing I have found that Vegas is much more feast or famine on stock than most other locations, so your first gamble of the trip is seeing what car you get.

Also I've had loads of cars with issues from slow punctures, leaking coolant, etc over the years - I suspect because many people just potter around the tourist zone and don't notice.

So I'd want to have any car for a day before heading off into the desert to shakedown any faults.

[paddy1970]

Rent from turo...instead of a stty rental car you can have these cars for the same money or cheaper:

https://turo.com/gb/en/suv-rental/united-states/no...

https://turo.com/gb/en/suv-rental/united-states/pa...

You can arrange delivery at the airport...

[Whataguy]

I always used to use Hertz at the Vegas airport, I'd regularly drive between there and San Diego and LA in a triangle - most of their full size cars/SUVs were fine for the trip through the desert.

Last time I was there you had to take a bus from the terminal to the main rental car centre, which was a bit of a pain after. along flight.

[gotoPzero]

Yes dont underestimate the condition of the vehicles. Gone are the days of getting nearly band new cars. Both times I have been recently its been quite high mile and tatty cars, 40-60k on the clock.

I had to return our last SUV as a wheel bearing failed. That was a fun drive from LA to Vegas with a grinding noise for 5 hours.

Thankfully our hotel (Cosmo) had a rental outlet on site so it actually wasn't a big hardship. You might be lucky and get something nice and new, but defo have a good look around the car and check the oil and water before you leave with the car.

[goingonholiday]

We used sixt last time, there fleet was newer than the big american brands. I was slightly concerned that the damage report when we picked the car up had literally every stone chip marked but no issues on return, they blarely looked at it and sent me on my way!

[Trustmeimadoctor]

imho sixt are not great in the USA but we have only used them twice first time atlanta they didnt have a single car available even though we had booked several months earlier, we had to wait 3 hours for a car to be returned

next orlando ordered 7 seat suv ended up with a 4runner with about 70k on the clock with broken usb ports and in a right state it could seat 7 but wasnt the tahoe or such we were expecting


our best experiences have been with alamo this year 17 mile expedition, last year a few hundred mile wagoneer. in fact we have used alamo on all our 10 florida rentals and never had an issue

enterprise was ok in vegas but more of an up sell than ive ever had with alamo at mco, sanford was a different story, there they always tried to up sell

Edited by Trustmeimadoctor on Monday 3rd June 14:18

[captain_cynic]

ChocolateFrog said:

Airport.

The convenience is worth it.

Yep, although like many major US airports the rental car parks are off-site but there will be a shuttle. It's not far unless they've moved it in the last decade.

It won't be much, if any cheaper downtown.