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Originally Posted by MSN.com

The going rate: $100 to rent a Hyundai
Holiday prices for rental cars soar 300%, if you can find one
By Prabha Natarajan
Pacific Business News (Honolulu)
Updated: 7:00 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2005

This Christmas season you could pay as much as $100 a day to rent a car in Hawaii.

That's if you're lucky enough to find one.

Hawaii is headed for one of the busiest holiday tourist seasons ever and some car rental chains, especially on the Neighbor Islands, are already sold out from Christmas through New Year's.

For the cars that remain, customers will pay dearly.

A PBN review of prices quoted online by national chains for an economy car picked up on Dec. 24 and returned on Dec. 26 found a steep increase -- as much as 300 percent -- from the prices quoted for early December.

That's the rate for the smallest car, something like a Hyundai Accent or Chevrolet Aveo subcompact. Sport utility vehicles can cost as much as $200 a day.

"Prices do surge during the peak demand periods, but they don't spike so much," said Neil Abrams, president of New York-based Abrams Consulting Group, which tracks rental car prices. "This is unusual and difficult to explain why it would be so high."

Some travel industry executives say the higher prices reflect the scarcity of cars, but others say the rental companies charge so much simply because they can.


"We have more cars on hand to meet the demand," said Lisa Martini, a spokeswoman for Enterprise based at its headquarters in St. Louis. "But we are sold out for limited blocks of time at two of our airport locations in Hawaii but cars are available at our nonairport locations."

"I've been in this business for 20 years and can never figure out their moves," said the owner, Jim Seekings, referring to the national chains. "The corporate offices of these rental car companies run it and play all kinds of games."

"We have more cars on hand to meet the demand," said Lisa Martini, a spokeswoman for Enterprise based at its headquarters in St. Louis. "But we are sold out for limited blocks of time at two of our airport locations in Hawaii but cars are available at our nonairport locations."

So when the cars run out at the Airport location where do you think the managers are going to turn to get cars for the Airports? So when the Airport comes calling for more cars and they get them does that mean the other locations are not going to raise rates?

Ummm. Hello?

This has to be one of the dumbest statements I have heard. This spokeswoman must have not taken too many Economics courses or ever been in rental.