AK Rental Cars this Summer
 

Mods, grant me a little leniency here because it is not strictly an AS issue. But rental cars are either wildly expensive or not available in ANC and FAI this summer. Get creative if you are planning travel. We felt like we were really getting stuck with bad rates at $800/week for a compact in June at ANC and then I went and looked to reprice it they are sold out. Hearing similar from others in FAI.

Alternatives like Turo don't even have that much.

I was in FAI last Saturday for a mileage run and planned to rent a car for the day, but literally every place was sold out so I used Lyft (no Uber cars were available) which worked fine for getting around town.

Source (published May 10, 2021): https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rental-...avel-rebounds/

PSA, Hertz at Fairbank closed for the whole summer (5/11/2021-9/30/2021), and even you hold a valid reservation booked directly, they will not notice you. I made a reservations months ago for my Fairbank trips two weeks out from now, and ALL fairbanks rentals are sold out on my dates. Turo are way to expensive, and the one I'm looking at still no response from the host. From what I can see now, I will need to cancel the whole trip most likely.
For my Independence day weekend, I booked in March with Avis, and when I want to extend 1 more day in April, the only option is to go up one class (the last class left) with double the price. I end up with adding a separate reservation from budget.
For shoulder season the rail option is very limited, yet it is another option during the regular summer season.

The "closure" is a weird Hertz issue when they are sold out. More here: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33246067-post31.html

Honestly, if I take a trip anywhere in Alaska during the summer, it's usually for no more than a few nights cause I can't quite stomach paying a zillion dollars a night for a Super 8 quality motel room that will be $50 outside of June/July/August.

It is like that all over the country. We just literally bought a car to keep at SEA when we go visit. Rental cars have been insane.

I went ahead and booked all the rental cars I needed for the summer the other day and they were still available at every location. Keep in mind, if you rent cars often, you probably have a pre-negotiated rate with an association or your employer so if there are cars available, you'll likely not be paying some inflated $100/day rate. Alaska is the first place I ran into a total lack of availability. They're gonna take another hit due to the cruise ship issue so not being able to rent a car for a week to drive around Denali is pretty much the nail in the coffin as far as tourism goes.

Sorry...also not AS....Agreed.....everywhere! GRR....cheapest rental is a cargo van....lol...I only need it while car getting a repair....so not a problem but....lol

$100+ a day? I can see why they’re calling it carmageddon.

That can even be on the lower end. Returned from Hawaii where initial cheapest rental rates (using every code/discount I could get my hands on) was $900 for 8 days for the smallest class of vehicle. Booked it and kept checking back for repricing and found National with the AS discount code saved me $300 with the cheapest and that was for a Jeep. The week before departure I saved another $120 by changing to a convertible through Avis.

Normally I'd pay about $230-$280 for a week long compact or mid size rental in HI, so a $480 rental still hurts.

Going to Boston in June and for 3 days the lowest rate I can find is over $400!

For those that think rideshare may be better, just a word of caution. Drivers were gaming the system in SNA last month. Rates were pretty normal (around $25) to get from SNA to Anaheim area initially, but what we found was that drivers would accept the ride and then cancel it. Meanwhile, we'd get offers for $50-$80 rides. Drivers cancelled on us 3 times when it was a reasonable rate, only to be followed each time by an offer with a significant increase in fare. Rideshare drivers may very well put themselves out of business as I will just go with a Taxi or inflated car rental instead of getting gouged by drivers turning off their phones to create artificial scarcity and/or cancelling rides and sending ridiculous offers.

Hawaii is even worse, but this has been well publicized for quite awhile now.

I live in inland empire, so one-way rental actually makes sense for me, when uber/lyft is 100+, while one-way rental is roughly the same price. All rental cars lot are in low stock, but they seem to be never out of stock though. With that being said, from your neighborhood locations to airport usually cost 200+.

Montana is bad (cannot get a car in Kalispell at all for week of June 14) and I hear from a collogue that Vegas is fully booked AND to use an Uber or Lyft you need to reserve it 24hrs in advance of your arrival.

National app shows availability in both Kalispell and Missoula for that week (of course it's defaulting to my corporate contract, which may have some availability overrides compared to general public searches)