Get a car rental deal in Hawaii

Looking into a Hawaii trip, I asked around about car rental deals for it and got pinged the Hawaii Drive O car rental company. Hawaii Drive O is a local rental car aggregator, using 5 different major suppliers to surface cheap car rental deals for their customers. The deals cover Oahu, Kauai, Maui, Molokai, and Big Island.

Apparently, anyone who has visited Hawaii already would be familiar with the fact that public transportation is pitiful, pretty much necessitating a car. Especially if getting out in that beautiful natural setting is of any interest. I'm sure that getting to city beaches isn't a problem, but who wants to be limited to that?

The differentiator for Hawaii Drive O is that they've negotiated corporate rentals deals with their partners (Thrifty, Dollar, Enterprise, and two unnamed others). They pass on these preferential rates to you as a customer. This also means the drop charges (where you return the car to a different location than where it was rented) are very reasonable, something which should make you take a close look at their rates if this is of interest.

So how do the rates stack up?

I looked at two variations: Renting a car for 8 days in Honolulu during January (Saturday to Saturday), and 4 days on Big Island / Kona International Airport during the same period. For comparison, I got quotes from Kayak.com, which often comes out trumps on other comparisons. Noon to noon rental times, and for mid-size cars.

• The Honolulu airport rental came out as $233.31 incl tax for Hawaii Drive O and $216 incl tax for Kayak.com.
• The Kona International airport rental was $133.43 incl tax with Hawaii Drive O and $152 incl tax from Kayak.com.

That's pretty good for going head-to-head with Kayak, as each site got one best quote. There are a whole load of testimonials on the Hawaii Drive O website backing this up.

And, if you're looking for ways to burn through some gas while driving around Hawaii, there's also a set of ideas for fun island drives on the site.

Still costing out the trip, but at least this is one way to maybe shave a few bucks off what is promising to be a pricey vacation trip.

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