Rental Car Bookings in Hawaii

I thought I would share my recent experiences with renting cars in Hilo and Honolulu for September. I always start with Discount Hawaii Car Rental, then I go directly to the rental car website. Often the car rental companies have specials similar to DHCR but DHCR comes out ahead because of the extra 1 or 2 additional drivers free of charge.

I have loyalty program numbers with most car rental companies.

In Hilo we booked Thrifty through DHCR. DHCR added my Blue Chip # and everything is set. A better price than directly with Thrifty or Costco.

In Honolulu we booked Alamo through Costco. Unfortunately Costco cannot add the Alamo Insider number which makes picking up the car more tedious. So...I rechecked DHCR to find that they had lowered their rate and were now competitive with Costco. I booked Thrifty through DHCR and they added my Blue Chip #. I can get the same price through Thrifty directly but the additional drivers are at an extra cost.

So, on CC we always say "make sure you join the loyalty program for your car rental company." Just make sure that whoever you book through can add that number to your reservation or you will wait in the same line as everyone else when you arrive.

I hope this may help someone when booking a rental car in the Hawaiian Islands. The differences can drive you crazy. Just make sure you check the rates every so often to see if they have gone down. Cherie

Thanks for the heads up. I didn't handle the car rentals, so I'll ask my husband about this and make sure we get what we think we are getting. I heard if you on line rent, you won't have to wait in long lines. Didn't know about the loyalty programs not being able to be used at times.

I don't think you have to worry about renting on-line unless your loyalty program number has not been or cannot be put on the reservation. Just verify your reservations and make sure your loyalty number is there. Cherie

 

In Honolulu we booked Alamo through Costco. Unfortunately Costco cannot add the Alamo Insider number which makes picking up the car more tedious.

I'm pretty sure that you could find your reservation on the Alamo website and add it before the rental.

I did pull up my Alamo reservation on the Alamo website and went through the check-in process and still was unable to add my Insider # on-line, a phone call was even necessary to cancel the reservation. So, I called Alamo and with the telephone call was able to add my Insider # plus the price had gone down $45. I was still getting the Costco discounts and benefit of an additional driver. One benefit of DHCR is that cancellations and modifications can be done on-line.

So...Not everything can be done on-line, which I prefer, but hopefully this experience will let everyone know that they need to make sure their loyalty program # is on the reservation and check to see if prices go down. The price for this mini-van went from $330 - $251. Cherie