Cut Rental Car Costs by Half – Every Time

I love renting cars, but hate paying up for rental cars. Over time, I’ve found a method which is very effective in reducing the cost of rental cars. It takes some time and patience – but can be very much worth it in a large cash savings. This method focuses on analyzing the data for rental cars, and bidding smartly on Priceline for your car. I have found the Priceline always offers “Opaque” rates far below the rental car companies – even with good online coupon codes.

Step 1 – Set Your Base Price: Use a travel site such as Expedia, Orbitz, or Travelocity to create a matrix of travel prices for the car you want. Write down the best price, for the type of car you want. Being willing to be a little flexible on the car type can be helpful, but is not required.

Step 2 – Hit Hotwire: Go to Hotwire.com, and search the same place, dates and times. Write down the price this gives you – it will likely be lower – but not always.

Step 3 – Look in the City: Are you flying to an airport and then transferring into a city center? Ie flying to San Francisco Airport SFO – then headed for downtown San Francisco? Search the same prices in #1 and #2 above at the City destination – not at the airport.

Tip: Airports charge big, big taxes on rental cars. By renting away from the airport, you can save significantly just on taxes right off the bat.

Step 4 – Costco: Are you a Costco member? Go to Costco.com and click on Travel. Check coupon / discount prices from 3 major rental car companies. I would suggest focusing on Avis, Alamo, and National. They aren’t #1 and they do try harder. If you find anything you’d consider – lock it in – there is no penalty for cancellation unless you choose a prepaid option.

Step 5 – Get Info: Go to biddingfortravel.com to check out prices that folks are getting approved and rejected at priceline.com. Try to match the rough period you are traveling by 1-2 weeks and guess from the car types that are winning. Ie if a midsize is winning at $25/day, a compact is likely to win at $20 per day. The info for your savings contained in this site is very important to bidding smartly.

Step 6 – Priceline: Priceline is your friend, and time is your 2nd best friend. Every day, you can bid for every car type on Priceline, and bid all over again in 24 hours. Don’t be pressured into a poor choice. The economy is weak – and cars need to get paying renters. Use all the data you compiled to bid at least 30%-50% off the Hotwire or best other price you found. Start by bidding the biggest car you’d take, and go down from there. You might get a bigger car for the cheap price you bid. Only bid one car type at a time. If all your bids fail – go up by ~$3 the next day and see how you do. Note that Priceline does charge fees which are above your normal government taxes. Make very sure you are saving at least 30% from your “best” price above before locking into a Priceline deal. Priceline is non-cancellable, so make sure your trip is locked too.

Backup Plan: Always hold a cancellable reservation from the standard companies. Use Priceline to try to improve your price, and don’t even bid if it isn’t a 30%-50% savings – including the Priceline fees. Here is a real life scenario we found with real results yesterday:

San Francisco Car Rental - July 2009 – Compact Car
Orbitz – Alamo is lowest at $724/week (SFO Airport)
Costco coupon brings Alamo down to $564 at Alamo’s site. (SFO Airport)
Hotwire at $452 (SFO Airport)
Enterprise – City downtown pickup at $277
Priceline accepted bid – $190

Our savings by going city downtown pickup and Priceline bidding was 74% versus our first search on Orbitz, and even 30% under the most comparable bid from Enterprise downtown (which is the savings % Priceline estimates).

Do your homework, and save serious money renting a car.

Parking Tricks in San Francisco

Parking in San Francisco has basically sucked for a long time. It’s either expensive, inconvenient, or impossible. A new site that contacted us however – has consolidated parking information in one convenient spot. They call themselves “Gottapark” and boy do I gotta park when I am going out in San Francisco.

It’s basically a Craigslist for parking spaces. You can make a quick buck renting your driveway or garage, and big parking lots downtown list too. You pay on the site, and then print out a voucher for your parking.

What we like about Gottapark is that it reveals a lot of “underground” parking that wouldn’t normally exist. The guy who lives next to Union Square, who rents out his garage; a big empty lot; and many other very weird options. If you want to be a little planful in a place where it’s smart too (very crappy parking) – it can make parking in San Francisco a little easier.

When we searched for parking spaces around “very popular” locations like Fisherman’s Wharf, Union Square and Embarcadero Center — the ease of comparing prices *BEFORE* you go is amazing. GottaPark makes it super easy to figure out the best price / location before you are driving around in traffic. Check it out – especially if you are headed to a popular spot like Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

San Francisco Hotel Prices Are Down by 25%.

Hotwire research by city shows that most hotel rates are down 25%-30% from the same month last year. This is a huge drop and it is giving much better prices for San Francisco hotels that we are seeing at all of our reviewed properties. You can check reviews and information on San Francisco hotels at sfTravel.

San Francisco Downtown Hotels for $75 or Less

Covering the San Francisco hotel industry, we see a lot of prices North of $200, and even “bargains” in the $150 range. When we saw our readers increasingly booking a basic, value hotel – we wanted to share it.

The Opal Hotel is right on Van Ness in San Francisco and thankfully a bit away from the Union Square tourist traps. Its a basic, older hotel – but with good quality rooms and service. Right now – they are regularly selling rooms for under $75 and we expect that to continue with the US recession.

Check out Opal Hotel and their ridiculously low rates.

San Francisco’s Best Discounts: Get on the Culture Bus.

San Francisco abounds with high priced tour bus companies that prey on lazy tourists. If you want to be carted around to some busy tourist sites – the charter buses can be convenient – if pricey.

But San Francisco wants to help you get the best discounts and has launched a very unique public bus service for just $7 “all you can ride” per day.

*Update* – The Culture Bus is no longer operating.

The Culture Bus is from the City of San Francisco and directly targeted at helping visitors see the most interesting sites including most of the largest museums and all of the attractions at the huge Golden Gate Park. To be fair, the bus doesn’t go to Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito, and other of the more challenging sites for tour companies — but its convenience to the Union Square hotel district can’t be matched.

One of the best ways to get discounts on your trip is by avoiding rental cars in San Francisco, and the hideous parking fees that will accompany your drives. The Culture Bus is a cool new way to save money and see the best museums in San Francisco.

San Francisco – Two Unusual Businesses Pop Up

We get a steady stream of interesting business review requests into our editorial team – and two this week caught our eye:

"Bud" will marry you in his cab.  We don’t mean he will get married to you – he’ll perform the nuptials in the cab or in any picturesque San Francisco view you choose.  Bud’s a notary, minister, cab driver — and all around interesting guy.  If you are looking to be married while sitting in San Francisco traffic – rest assured — you won’t need to look for parking.

"Billion Dollar Babes" are staging a massive fashion sale in San Francisco.  No – they’re not fodder for Eliot Spitzer’s friends at $1 billion per pop (would he consider this?).  It’s a very cool fashion sale at deep discounts that visits San Francisco rarely for the special sale.  It’s at the "Regency Center" at Van Ness and Sutter (1290 Sutter).  The sale features every high-brow designer imaginable – we’re too poor to even know most of these names.  It costs only $100-$200 per year to be a "Billion Dollar Babe" (a bargain!) – and no joke – you need to be a member to enter this sale.  Check out Regency Center (a cool looking historic place) below…