Jaunted

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While Every Other Travel Thing is Cheaper, Rental Cars are Still Super Expensive

Airfares and hotel room prices have fallen markedly in response to the global economic meltdown, but rental car rates are as high as ever, prompting the penny-pinchers over at Budget Travel to offer up a few tips on keeping the costs down on your next trip. In an AP item, the magazine's editor-in-chief said that car rental companies are unique in that they can trim their supply of cars very easily, maintaining a tight market for rentals. Thus, your best bet for a bargain is to book in advance, look for a discount code on a site like best-car-rental-tips.com, or use a bidding site like Priceline.

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Hate Paying A Lot (Or At All) For Rental Cars? This Contest Is For You

Alright, so we might be winging our way to St. Lucia right now Jetblue, but we swear they didn't tell us to tell you about this contest; that's just what we do—pass on news about free travel stuff to you. And you might want to consider entering the airline's new "Jet & Drive Giveaway," if you like the idea of possibly winning free travel.

The contest, which just barely began and runs through January 31, 2010, is the fruit of a partnership between Jetblue and Hertz, and Marriott and Starwood to a lesser extent. The deal is: you enter your info on their contest page and the page keeps a running tally on how many have entered. Each day, Jetblue will give away a $100 Hertz certificate, but if the day's tally manages to pass 2,500 or even 5,000, then they'll tack on giveaways of a $2500 Hertz certificate and a $500 Jetblue gift card, respectively. But the prizes just get sweeter from there...

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Prepare For A PT Cruiser Rental Car Shortage

Time is running out if you’re dreaming to get a Sebring convertible or other Chrysler rental car on your next trip. Dollar and Thrifty announced that they’ve canceled their orders for loads of cars from the American carmaker. In the past, the two rental car companies have ordered almost three quarters of their fleet from Chrysler, but in 2010, only about a third will be coming from the pentastar. The company had an agreement with Chrysler that required a certain amount of order per year, but after Chrysler hit the bankruptcy courts, Dollar and Thrifty were free to go elsewhere.

They will be looking to Ford, General Motors, Nissan, and Kia to fill the parking spaces at airports around the country. For 2010, Dollar and Thrifty will be purchasing about 90,000 vehicles, but only 27,000 of these cars will be coming from Chrysler. In the good old days there would have been a much larger check being written over to Chrysler.

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Burn Your United Miles On More Than Just Free Flights

United Airlines is all about being in the news lately. Earlier in the week they got our attention with their unlimited baggage fee—too bad we’re still not totally sure if it’s worth it. If you are a diehard United fan then you’ve probably accumulated your share of frequent flyer miles with the airline, and with availability getting more and more limited everyday, you probably need a way to burn some. If that award ticket to Tahiti just isn’t happening, you might want to consider using them for a car or hotel.

United’s Mileage Plus members can now use their hard earned miles to book a rental car or a hotel stay. They’ve launched a new booking engine for each service, so you can easily find out how much damage that “free” hotel stay will do to your account. If you’re looking to relax in New York City next weekend you can crash at the Hilton New York on Saturday night for 48,250 miles. Unfortunately, you could get yourself to Hawaii with that many miles, so we say it’s totally not worth it. However, it’s an option, and we do appreciate a choice.

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Only A Few Days Left To Light Up In Your Rental Car

Anytime we have rented a car in recent memory, we were reminded early and often not to smoke in the car—even if it was just a PT Cruiser. We’re pretty sure that we had to sign something, and there was always that no smoking sticker right by the lighter where we plugged in our iPod. Apparently, smoking in your rental car is a vacation luxury that we missed out on, and now our time is severely limited.

On October 1, Budget and Avis will become the first two rental car companies to ban smoking in their rental fleet in North America. If you’re caught puffing away, you’ll get nailed with a cleaning fee of up to $250. Too bad they won’t ban fast food in their cars, as we are sick of soda stains in the seats and fries in every nook and cranny of the center console.

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Forget Snakes In Planes; They're In Our Rental Cars Now

We’ve all received rental cars that had a less than stellar appearance, especially when it comes to the car’s interior. Besides the many lovely odors, stains are the rule rather than the exception. Above all, our favorite is when former drivers have decided to install some type of foodstuff into the upholstery. Thankfully, despite all our rental car troubles, we’ve never received a car with a living critter inside. However, that’s exactly what a Florida woman found when she rented a car from Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Last week a college student hopped into her rental ride, and immediately hopped right back out. There was a red rat snake just hanging out on the dashboard of the car, and at over a yard in length, it was not a welcome surprise. Luckily, the snake wasn’t poisonous, and the rental car company sent out an animal trapper to capture the stowaway.

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Tags: Rental Cars / Enterprise / Hawaii Travel / Oahu Travel / Maui Travel / Green Travel / Hybrids / → All Tags

Happy Anniversary Hawaii: Here's Some New Hybrid Rental Cars

Last week was the Aloha State’s birthday as the islands officially commemorated its fiftieth anniversary of statehood. State leaders usually downplay celebrations as some Hawaii residents aren’t too thrilled about how the island chain was admitting into the union. We don’t want to get into the debate, but there are still some who demand independence from the United States.

Although not an official birthday present—they couldn’t find that much wrapping paper—Enterprise Rent-A-Car is gifting the island with some new hybrid rental cars. The chain teamed up with Governor Linda Lingle to announce that four locations are becoming hybrid branches. There will be three on Oahu and one on Maui to answer your green car dreams during your vacation.

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Brits On An American Road Trip: Five Top Tips

Planning a road trip? HotelChatter contributor London Town is on one from LA to New York at the moment. Some top tips from a week on the road…

Don’t plan ahead too far
On our last road trip, we planned our stops by the day, which made for guilt aplenty when we made unscheduled stops, and crazy-fast driving to make up the time. This time, we’ve sussed out accommodation options for where we want to be, and where we’ll likely be, and called from the road in the afternoon. As a result, we’ve had plenty detours and we’re all the better for it (if a week behind schedule).

Don’t rely on GPS
Yesterday, we asked our GPS to take us through Texas from Abilene to Austin, via Crawford, to stalk George Bush. It swore that the fastest route would go on the interstate through Fort Worth and take nine hours. Luckily, we looked at a map that showed that that would be like doing two sides of a triangle, ditched the GPS and went cross country. It took five hours.

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Tips And Tricks For Scoring The Best Priceline Rental Car Rate

Priceline is dicey for some things, good for others, and fantastic for a very few. There's an anti-Priceline argument to be made for airlines because flying is enough of a hassle without adding in unpredictability. Hotels are much better, since if you're flexible on location you can pretty much control everything else. Rental cars, however, are all the way at the great end of the "Priceline is awesome" spectrum, since car companies are functionally interchangeable and for the purposes of a short trip, a car is a car is a car.

Name-Your-Own-Price car rentals come with the usual Priceline disadvantages. As always, bids are non-refundable and changes are unavailable. Car rentals specifically also come with the caveat that you can't bid on one way trips.

That said, car rentals also come with the usual array of advantages. Just out of the box, you're likely to get 20%-30% off the discount price. You can push the price down even more by using the usual array of insider Priceline strategies.

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Bye Bye, PT Cruiser: Imports Take The Rental Car Crown

Anytime we have to rent a car, we’re pretty certain that our keys will be used to unlock and operate a domestic vehicle, but for the first time ever, car rental companies are actually filling their fleets with more import autos. That means you’ve got a better chance of scoring something from outside the nifty fifty—for better or for worse.

According to numbers released by the trade rag Automotive Fleet, only 48.8 percent of new cars heading to the rental lot came from General Motors, Chrysler, or Ford. We didn’t take too many math classes in college, but we know that means more than 50 percent of rental cars now come from overseas. Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, and Nissan are just some of the new kids on the block—guess that means no more Pontiac G6s for us.

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Hertz Cars Will Freshen Up Using New-Fangled, Odor-Busting Technology

Hopping into an odiferous rental car is never a great way to start a vacation. We already know that we’re stuck with older cars until the economy turns around, so the potential for getting a ripe car is pretty likely. Thankfully one rental company is looking to fix that funny smelling upholstery, and they’re doing a little more than just hanging an tree-shaped air freshener from the rear view mirror.

Hertz is going to use the latest technology offered by OMI Industries to introduce the Fresh Wave IAQ to maintain that new car scent in its vehicles. Best of all about this new rental car tech is that it's green, as all of the products used are derived from plant extracts. This way you won’t be exchanging the smell of old fast food for the smell of chemicals.

There’s no timeline as to when this magical new product will be cleaning up your next car, so for now you might want to check a bottle of Febreze in your luggage. However, Hertz is pretty excited about this new technology, because they do recognize that smelly cars are kept off the road and result in dissatisfied customers.

Related Stories:
· Hertz Tackles That Not-So-New Car Smell [WSJ]
· Do Any Rental Car Companies Trust 18-Year-Olds? [Jaunted]
· Cars coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: XxSTRYKERxX]

Tags: Travel Ads / Rental Cars / Elite Car Rental / Luxury Travel / Sex Travel / → All Tags

Elite Car Rental's New Ad Might Make You Rent a Luxury Car...Or Just Get Horny

Usually when we talk about Rental Cars here, we are often griping about the humiliating car we received at the airport, or the inevitable malfunction that happens after we drive out of the parking lot. Of course, there's some good things to say too like getting a cheap one-way rental or a great weekend deal.

But we don't often comment on car rental ads much. Maybe it's because nothing has ever peaked our interest since OJ had to stop doing those ads for Hertz. (You know, because of that "pesky" murder trial.) However, Elite Car Rental has changed all that around. AdRants recently posted about this racy ad from the luxury car rental company that had Adrants a little confused about the direction of the ad which has the tagline, "Get There Faster."

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