Tips for International Car Rental

Jon is a good and confident driver and has rented cars in multiple countries before this trip. However, some of the confidence didn’t allow for adequate preparation. He did not read up on tips for international car rental. He did get an International Drivers Permit (IDP) from AAA before leaving Kentucky. It is inexpensive to obtain and sometimes required to rent a car. Anyways, that was the only preparation for our trip in terms of renting cars. That was mistake number one. Here’s the growing list of mistakes made and lessons learned, but first a quick test.

Do you know all these European signs?

Lessons Learned

1. Don’t try to get gas in Paris at night. Jon had quite an adventure with this, ask him for the full story sometime.
2. Study all local road signs before driving. Sounds easy, but European road signs are different than in the USA and can be confusing. Especially added to all the other driving differences.
3. The ability to drive a manual transmission sounds good. It becomes much harder in bad traffic, when you don’t know where you are going, with people on your bumper during uphill starts. The stress of that combination is worse than paying a bit extra for an automatic transmission.
4. Learn about automatic speeding tickets. Jon got a ticket via email for driving 5 kmh (3.2 mph) over the speed limit, on the divided highway, while driving to Normandy. This was his fault for not knowing the rules, and the French are the French. There’s no way of knowing if you got a ticket until days later, so thankfully it was the only one!
5. Ensure you have proper toll vignettes. Many countries have automatic tolling only, check with your rental car company if they have already provided it. We needed one in Slovenia and a separate one in Austria.
6. Make sure to include any border crossings in your rental agreement. It will help you with the above toll issue and any liability issues. Yes, it stinks to pay an extra rental fee to drive to Crotia and Austria from Slovenia, but it’s the right thing to do.
7. Practice round-a-bouts at home. They are everywhere in Europe, and are honestly great. However, unless you drive them regularly it can take a few times to learn proper entering, lane selection, and exiting.
8. Do not use economybookings.com. After paying in full for a confirmed booking, we arrived at the airport in Ljubljana. However, the supplier had no car available, and would offer no solution. The customer service at economybookings.com offered to “help” Jon book a similar car with a different supplier at 4 times the confirmed booking cost. We ended up working directly with an on-site Budget agent to get a car, and more than a month later had still not received the refund from economybooking.com. Caveat emptor. (Update: after multiple (4) times reaching out to Booking Group they eventually completed the refund.)
9. Compare car rental deals. We check at least: Hotwire, Priceline, Qeeq, and Skyscanner. After finding the best price, search for a promo code. Last, compare the best price to booking directly with that car supplier. It’s best to have a direct booking if the price is comparable.

All in all, the transportation on our trip has been great. We have primarily utilized public transportation, but renting cars was necessary at times. We have gotten to each destination as expected, without a single major issue. However, if you can learn these lessons from our mistakes, all the better.

We plan to continue adding to our travels and memories!  To see the pictures that accompany our world travel adventures, head over to our Instagram page. 

Comment below with any questions you have or share your tips for international car rental!