For many popular destinations in Europe, car rental prices at Easter are lower than they were a year ago. This is shown by data evaluations of the portals Check 24 and Billiger-mietwagen.de. However, prices are still a long way from the significantly cheaper pre-corona level of 2019. In some cases, the cars currently cost more than double. And not everywhere it went down with the prices.

Check24 shows the most significant price declines from Easter 2022 to Easter 2023 in Croatia with a good 45 percent, Greece with just under 20 percent or Spain with just under 19 percent. In Norway, prices fall by 10 percent, in Cyprus by 9 percent and in Italy by 7 percent.

In some holiday destinations, on the other hand, prices are rising significantly – especially in less frequently booked destinations such as Australia or Morocco – but also in Portugal, where it went up by a good 24 percent. Across all bookings, there was a minus of a good 3 percent compared to the previous year.

Billiger-mietwagen.de also sees the strongest price declines in Croatia, but by 42 percent. This is followed by Spain with a decline of 30 percent, Italy with 29 percent, France with 26 percent and Austria with 22 percent.

Fleet reduction as a price driver

The platform also detects significant increases in less frequently targeted destinations such as Australia with a plus of 24 percent or South Africa with a 22 percent price increase. In contrast to Check 24, Portugal recorded a price decline of 9 percent.

Differences in the data can be due to slightly different survey periods as well as to different booking behavior of the customers of the two platforms.

Car rental prices had risen significantly as a result of Corona and delivery difficulties for car manufacturers. After the market crashed at the beginning of the pandemic, many providers had greatly reduced their fleets.

However, when travel activity and thus demand picked up again, car manufacturers were unable to meet the rental companies' delivery requests, which made the vehicles much more expensive.

This year, however, there are significantly more available rental cars, said the managing director of rental cars at Check 24, Andreas Schiffelholz. Especially for smaller vehicles, however, the supply is still low. billiger-mietwagen.de also says that the delivery situation for rental vehicles is slowly relaxing, but that there are still bottlenecks for the popular compact and small cars. Both advise to book early.