It’s not a surprise anymore to regular travelers — The advertised price for a rental car bears no relationship to the price you will actually pay, especially at big city airports.
In the U.S, Arizona, Texas and Florida seem to add some of the highest mandatory extra fees but the additional charges are pretty significant in other locations. Sales taxes make sense, and sometimes there are additional state taxes or voter-approved surcharges to fund everything from a convention center (Boston) to a Stadium (Phoenix).
However, some of these additional fees such as “facilities charges, concession fees, airport fees, vehicle license fees, energy recovery fees, shuttle bus fees….” might well be considered costs of doing business.
(At one point years ago, Alamo Rent a Car in Hawaii instituted a MANDATORY cleaning fee for all cars upon return, whether or not there was even a grain of sand or a speck of dirt in the vehicle. Fortunately, traveler outrage eventually took care of that one.)
With most car reservation systems and travel agent GDSs (global distribution systems), these extra charges do show up in the estimated total shown on the screen, if not in the base rate. So why not include them in the basic rate?
The obvious answer is that separating the extra fees allows rental car companies to advertise a lower rate. But, I believe a more important reason is that this method means more profit.
When a travel agent or traveler books a car, most of the time a discount rate is available. Such a rate is as easy to book as adding a corporate number to the reservation.
Many travelers, for example, have corporate rates through their companies. For those that don’t, agents can request AAA, AARP or consortium rates. A travel agent or an individual traveler with access to discount codes can try a few different corporate numbers to see which rate comes out lower.
All of these discounts, ranging from five percent to flat rates that can almost cut a rental price in half, have one thing in common — They don’t apply on many surcharges. This means, that the customer facility fee, vehicle licensing fee and so on are not discounted and all go directly to the rental car company’s bottom line.
In addition, rental car companies usually pay a travel agent five percent commission on bookings. (In rare cases, ten percent.) All these extra fees? Non-commissionable.
Plus, I believe we can expect more fees. It’s easy for voters to vote to tax someone else (i.e. business travelers and tourists). In Phoenix for example, all rental car drivers pay a fee to help pay for the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale. There are plenty of examples and I’m sure there will be more.
These fees don’t even include the real optional items — extra drivers, insurance, add-ons like ski racks and child seats or fuel. (On a side note: I’ve always found the “buy a full tank” of gas particularly annoying. First, you may not use a whole tank and second, it’s a little stress inducing to try to run a tank down to empty, especially in an unfamiliar car, so most drivers are likely to pay for gas they don’t use.)
While it would be nice to see a company break from the mold and offer all-inclusive pricing, that seems unlikely, because their advertised rates would look so much higher. So expect the fees and surcharges to continue and for new ones to be added as quickly as municipalities, states and the companies themselves can conjure them up.
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
