Best place to rent car in Anchorage?

[ClaudiaB]

We plan to tour independently after arriving in Seward and staying there a couple days. I believe we can do what we want to do there without a car. After taking a train to Anchorage (and is that the best way to get there??) we'd like to rent a car there and head to Denali the next day.

 

We're just under a year out, leaving the ship on Aug. 21.

 

My assumption is the airport is the best place to rent as we'll be returning there to fly out. Is that true? And if not, what would you do? Looking for advice from those who have done something like this.

 

I read here that some "deals" can be had by arranging for this well ahead of time.

[Mrs. Squirrel]

I just booked a rental last week from the Hertz HLE location, downtown, for a land portion after our July, 2015 cruise. We are arriving in Anchorage via the Alaskan Railroad train from Seward. Booking this early, I was able to secure a weekly, economy car rental for $133 plus tax on a pre-paid rate with return to the Anchorage Airport. There was no additional fee for returning to the airport.

 

I used our local AAA code and am a Hertz Gold Member, but of no high status. The HLE locations will pick you up in a set area around their rental office for no charge.

[mapleleaves]

There's really no short-cut .... you need to price all the options, all the sites. Sometimes it's cheaper to rent downtown, even with the cost of a taxi, but sometimes you can get a better deal at the airport. Prices fluctuate wildly so you just need to check all the web sites diliegently, up until the day you leave. Look at the big sites like expedia, even costco, as well as the individual vendors, and look at downtown and airport locations. Sorry, there's no shortcut. Book the best deal you can find NOW (assuming there's no cancel fee), then keep checking ALL the sites in hopes of finding a better deal.

 

Enterprise had been running their 2015 special pricing; the office on International was $150 a week. But last time i checked, the early bird pricing was over.

 

Good luck!

[AryMay]

Keep checking the individual rental websites...but also keep an eye out for deals mentioned on this board and the Alaska forums on TA. I believe it was September last year when I saw a post on TA about low rates with Budget and was able to reserve a car for June (2014) for $10 a day.

 

At that point I wasn't exactly sure of how long we would need the car so I made two reservations with one being slightly longer than the other. Once our plans were definite then I went online and cancelled the extra reservation.

 

Even though I called about a month before our trip and confirmed this rate, I was still nervous that they wouldn't honor the rate when we got to the airport. I am happy to say, however, that everything worked out well and we enjoyed the flexibility of having the car.

[Cassicruiser]

Does anyone know if it's possible to rent a car at the airport in Anchorage and return it in Seward a couple of days later when we drive down to board our ship?

Thanks

[j&bcruzing]

Hertz is the only option for renting a car to go to Seward and drop it off. We ended renting from the location downtown Anchorage vs the airport and saved $300 for 3 days and 2 cars.

[bottom-dragger]

by renting a car downtown vs the airport you will save

airport consession recovery fee 11.11%

and

consolidated facility charge $6.50/day

 

i've never had to pay these charges when renting downtown and returning the car to the airport.

 

april '13 i pricelined a car in anc for <$10/day

[uvasag]

autoslash.com keeps checking if the rental prices have gone down after you book. They will rebook at the cheaper price. I've used them in the past with price reduction happening twice. Their customer service too is excellent. I get an email reply back from them within a couple of hours. For Alaska, their online website is not that great as they don't have Seward as a dropoff option. I wrote to them and they said if I emailed them my details they would manually book it for me and once in the system it would keep checking if prices go down.