Car Rental Trivia

Did you folks know that Alamo Rental Car, National Car Rental, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car are all owned by the same family... the Taylor Family of St. Louis?

Interesting, huh?!

Oh... by the way... I actually used one of the consolidators - Hotwire - today to make a new car rental reservation that saved me roughly $80 bucks compared to my previous "best rate" reservation.

(The moment I book a trip - purchase the airfare - I then lock in the best rental car rate I can get and between then and the actual day of departure I periodically check for better prices and re-book as appropriate.)

The only problem with using a consolidator - a third party - is that in certain respects this puts you in the position of "second class citizen" as far as the actual service provider is concerned should problems arise and also quite often you're not eligible for the normal perks a registered frequent customer would get booking directly.

Anyway... at the moment I have a full sized car reserved for six days at $20/day; even with the taxes, fees, and surcharges connected to an on-site airport rental, it still comes out to less than $200 for the "week."