European travel with a baby: Hiring a car
Written by Amanda Kendle
I’ve got a new Europe travel planning challenge coming up: organising a trip to Germany with my new baby to introduce him to his relatives. At the time of our trip he’ll be about four months old (hopefully an ideal time to travel) and over the next few weeks I’m going to use this experience to share some Europe travel tips and advice on travels with a baby or young children. And perhaps I can get some good advice from readers, too!
First up is renting a car. In contrast to my previous car rental experience on holidays, this time I’m not going for the bottom-of-the-range budget option. We need enough space for three adults, a baby, and a lot of luggage and baby paraphernalia, and decided on a station wagon of some kind.
I hit the web to compare prices from some of the major rental car companies represented in Germany: Hertz, Budget, Europcar and Sixt. The good news is that all four of them had user-friendly websites and it wasn’t too hard to get the information I was looking for. The bad news was that after all that effort, the price differences between companies was minimal! However, my tips would be:
- If possible – that is, if you have the money available, and if you are reasonably sure of your plans – pay for the rental up front. The savings can be large, up to 25% or so. And the rental I chose had a small cancellation fee of around 50 Euros if I did end up having to cancel, which was cheap compared to the amount I was saving.
- If you’re travelling with children, definitely go for a bigger car than you think you’ll need – you don’t want to be squeezing the last suitcase in on top of somebody’s lap, and the extra cost will make your holiday run much more smoothly.
- Before you sign up for extra insurance, check if your credit card offers you any coverage. My Gold Visa covers me for any excess I may have to pay in the event of a rental car accident, so there’s no need for me to pay extra at the car rental company for insurance to cover this. There’s also the option of purchasing car rental excess insurance.
- Try to rent any extras you need – for example, a baby or a child seat, or a portable DVD player to keep the kids amused – from the same car rental company. Combining these generally makes it cheaper.
- Make sure you can pick the car up from the airport, and that the rental desk is open at the time your flight arrives. Obviously a 24-hour service is the best in case your flight is delayed.
[Pic of many cars from torley]
Please don’t ever rent a carseat from your rental car agency. I hear from readers every year who are quite literally stranded at the airport or train station because the agency has either run out of seats or the seats that they have are aged, damaged, or filthy. I myself have seen seats that were 15 years old, covered in vomit, or had huge cracks in them, even from the major rental agencies. It’s better to bring your own and most airlines will check them for free.
I chose had a small cancellation fee of around 50 Euros if I did end up having to cancel, which was cheap compared to the amount I was saving.
Have you got this right?
50 euros cancellation is expensive?
Congratulations on the new baby, Amanda! Yes, 4 months is a great time for travel, particularly long airline trips when you can pre-book a bassinette. On the topic of carseats, I hate dragging them along on trips (even with kids, I try to travel pretty light) and have always refused to do so. I have always rented them and never had any problems. Good luck!
@ Debbie, thanks for the tip but I hope @ Kimberly that I have your experience instead!
@ James, the savings for paying up front were about 600 Euros; therefore, if something unforeseen happens and I have to pay 50 Euros cancellation, then it’s “cheap” – I mean, most likely I will just end up saving the 600 Euros, therefore it’s a cheap risk to take!
Just 2 weeks ago, I tried to rent a car at the Munich Airport using my Visa Bank card for the CDW as I’ve done many, many times before. I was informed that as of Jan. 1 2010, Visa was no longer accepted even though they told me they would cover me. Instead I HAD to purchase the insurance at the counter plus pay the deductible up front in case of an accident making my rental cost jump from $402 to $1200. I did get $600 refunded at the end when I had no accidents, but it really put a crimp on my credit card limit for the ten days. I was horrified. Beware, it’s hard to find any indication of this on the internet when you rent – - only in very tiny print at the end.