The picture is the same in Hawaii, Florida, Texas and Colorado: tourists who take a few days off in time for the “spring break” in the USA are faced with a previously unknown problem. They have to pay between $ 300 and $ 500 a day for a small car – if they can get a rental car at all. At 18 of 20 airports in the sunny state of Florida, the affiliated car rental companies were completely sold out, as Jonathan Weinberg, head of the rental car comparison portal AutoSlash, reported to the broadcaster CNN. According to Weinberg, this is not a short-term phenomenon, but should drag on until summer.
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Exactly a year ago, the daily rents at many rental companies had dropped to $ 5 a day. With the first Corona lockdown, air travel in the USA also largely came to a standstill, and the car rental companies lost their customers. In order to survive the following months, many rental companies drastically reduced their car fleets. Around a third of the available fleet was pushed into the used car market: While thousands of rental cars were moved unused to reserve parking spaces, many dealers were happy about every car sold – to survive the spring of 2020 economically, they urgently needed cash.
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A year later, the situation is reversed: a drastically reduced supply meets a sharp rise in demand. With the US moving forward with its vaccination campaign at record speed, a few days off is again a realistic option for many American families. The only thing that is new is that you currently have to pay significantly more for a rental car in America, which is the car country, than for your plane ticket plus hotel costs at your holiday destination.
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Automangel im Autoland USA
“Anyone who can currently get hold of a small car like a Kia Rio for $ 300 a day at the resort can consider themselves lucky,” says Weinberg. “We have never seen such price jumps here before.”
What exacerbates the car shortage: Most car rental companies were in the red in 2020 and currently do not have enough cash to quickly replenish their fleets. Even the few who order new cars often have to wait for weeks: as not enough chips are available in numerous car factories in the USA as well as in Europe, production has come to a standstill.
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A few months ago it was hardly conceivable that there would be a shortage of cars in the USA of all places. But the more successful the US vaccination campaign is – the US government wants up to 200 million Americans to be vaccinated by the end of May – the more likely it is that US citizens will have to get used to moon prices on the rental car market for the time being.
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