A good rental car is one thing you are going to need when visiting Maui, Kauai, or the Big Island. They are less convenient in Honolulu since parking is at a premium, but would likely be necessary if staying at Turtle Bay or somewhere outside of Honolulu. Oahu has a great bus system as well, unlike the other islands, so having a car is not as important.
The best advice I could give on rental cars in Hawaii is to make sure you have your own insurance before you get there. They charge ridiculous amounts for their insurance. We did not realize you can get insurance at home that will cover rental car insurances, so we ended up paying way more than we had planned.
Here in BC the ICBC RoadStar package covers rental car insurance, and I believe it only costs about thirty dollars or so.
I believe some credit card companies cover rental car insurance as well, if you pay for the rental using their card, so keep an eye out for that as well.
Of course you can always go without the extra insurance if you don’t want to pay. But it seems like a sure way to ruin a vacation if something happens to your rental car that you declined the extra insurance on.
During our wedding trip of 2008 we pretty much had to pay the extra fees. We did not know if we had any extra coverage, and did not want to have our wedding trip ruined because we didn’t buy an extra $500 worth of insurance. Although we were pretty mad about having to pay so much.
On our wedding trip of 2008 we used Budget Rental Car at the Kahului Airport. As with all the rental car companies at the airport they have shuttle buses to take you to their car lots. Almost everyone in our group rented from Budget, and most were happy, except us of course with the extra fees. It seemed we were one of the few who didn’t know you could get insurance at home. But we would have had to pay the fees at any of the rental companies there, so it was mostly our issue and not theirs.
But of course we still didn’t go back to Budget on our 2009 trip. Instead we tried Alamo. They were good to deal with. We got through the paperwork, and they send you out to their lot to pick a car. They have a group of cars from your car class, and you get to pick the one you want.
But as with any rental car, you should make sure to check it over very well before you leave.
We ended up having to return a few of their cars. The first had a faulty set of keys. Not a big deal, but for a ten day vacation we wanted to be able to use the auto keypad to open the doors and truck without putting the key in the actual lock, which is always handy if you have your hands full.
The second car had a front tire with a bit of a gouge in it. We drove for a few days before we noticed it. But we took photos of the entire car before we drove it off the lot. So when we checked the photos, we could clearly see it was there when we picked up the car. We just didn’t notice when we first got the car. They gave us a new one with no questions asked, but we were happy to have the photos in case we needed backup on the issue.
The third car was good, and we had no troubles with it. But of course we checked it over very well before we left.
We also rented from Budget on the Big Island, and Alamo on Kauai. Both were good to deal with and we had no complaints.
One last tip would be to check the prices online quite often. We had a car booked, but noticed the same class of car was now listed at half price. So of course I canceled the original reservation and got the newer price. Not sure if that happens often, but perhaps it is something to keep an eye on if you think you got a bad deal.
Hope this all helps, good luck with your travels…
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