Prices for renting a car went up 75% in 2021. That said, if you are flexible, you can still score great car rental deals for your trip to Melbourne, Australia. Here are a few tips on how to get the best car rental deals in Melbourne, Australia in 2022.

10 Steps to get the best car rental deals in Melbourne, Australia in 2022

Use Metasearch

Instead of going directly to Budget, Avis or even Priceline, You might want to consider a metasearch, which is basically a search engine of online travel agencies. A metasearch engine aggregates all the deals from many different booking sites and shows you all the available offers for that car rental. By doing this, you will save you a lot of time (and money) when trying to find the best car rental price in Melbourne, Australia. You will only have to enter 1 site, but will have access to Melbourne car rental deals from multiple websites. Some examples of metasearch engines are carrentals.com and rentalcars.com.

Check prices AFTER you book

After you book you car rental, go to a different metasearch engine than the one you used (in case you used one) and enter the exact same car rental details as the reservation you made. Then, setup an alert to notify you if prices drop. This way, if the price drops for your car rental in Melbourne, you will get an alert and can just rebook the cheaper rate and save money.

Ditch the airport pickup

Picking up and dropping off a car at the airport usually comes along with a premium price. Try searching for car rental dealers in the Melbourne, not at the airport.

Go Manual

Some car rental dealers offer better prices for cars with manual transmission. If you know how to drive using a stick shift, this can help shave off a few dollars a day for your car rental in Melbourne.

Shop at Costco

If you have a Costco membership, you are in luck! You can get amazing travel deals at Costco´s website as well. Make sure to glance at their car rental offers for Melbourne prior to booking your vehicle elsewhere.

Walk Up to counters

If you step outside the Melbourne airport premises, you will find some family owned car rental shops. These are local brands that can offer you better prices sometimes. That said, I would not opt for this if you are travelling at peak seasons, since rental cars tend to be scarce in Melbourne, Australia around those dates.

Use your credit card insurance

Some credit cards will offer insurance for rental car vehicles if you book the car using their card. This varies from company to company so make sure to ask your credit card provider prior to assuming so. If they do, this will save you between 30%-70% of the cost of your rental car, since insurance costs can reach hefty amounts based on the coverage you select.

Drop the add-ons

Add-ons such as GPS can tally up the price pretty quickly. It is much cheaper to buy a local sim in Melbourne and use mobile data for Waze than to pay $10-$15/day for GPS.

Go Peer-to-Peer

P2P might be your best bet to get the best car rental deals in Melbourne, Australia in 2022. Turo and Outdoorsy are great sites to shop for car rentals in Melbourne. Another advantage is saving time on paperwork, since everything is done online.