Renting a car in Birmingham is much more expensive than last year, survey says
The cost of renting a car for a week in Birmingham has almost doubled in the last year.
That’s according to a survey from Cheapcarrental.net, a site devoted to finding bargains in car rental fees.
According to the survey, the most expensive city in the U.S. to rent a car this summer is Madison, Wisc., at an average of $702 per week for the cheapest rental car.
That’s followed by Anchorage, Alaska, at $698 per week, and Spokane, Wash., at $681 per week.
Among the top 100 most expensive cities, Birmingham ranks near the middle of the pack at 37, with $449 per week. However, the Magic City has seen some of the biggest price hikes in the past year, according to the survey.
Reno, for example, saw an increase of more than 50%, with Grand Rapids, Mich. second at 44%. Birmingham was third, with prices 42% higher than the previous year.
The prices reflect average weekly rates (Sunday to Saturday) for the cheapest rental car for this month. Only rental car companies situated directly at a destination’s airport, or at the airport’s respective rental car center, were taken into account for the survey.
High rental rates are a problem throughout the country. According to NerdWallet, the cost of renting a car has increased 48% since May 2019, using figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The reasons are two-fold. Car rental companies divested themselves of many of their fleet cars in the early days of the pandemic, and were not able to quickly replenish them due to microchip shortages and supply chain problems among automakers.
What’s more, the post-pandemic boom in travel has some companies raking in the dough.
“They’re not incentivized to bring their prices down because, for the past two years, people have been paying these prices,” Albert Mangahas, chief data officer at Turo, a car-sharing platform, told NerdWallet.