Experiences & tips on Avis/Budget car hire at Palma de Mallorca Airport

We booked a rental car at Palma de Mallorca Airport for the first time and were pleasantly surprised by Avis/Budget: the two brands share a (good) fleet of vehicles and a counter. It doesn’t always have to be Europcar or Sixt. What you should consider and how it is as cheap as possible, we explain here!

Vehicle selection: At least as good with Avis/Budget as with Sixt, Europcar and co.!

It’s almost always the same with rental cars: you book the “Golf” insurance as a holiday rental car, but then you get a Peugeot, Ford or Hyundai with the simplest engine – that’s how it was with Hertz in Greece, for example. We took a close look at the rental car selection in Mallorca at the tourist hotspots and in the airport car park. From our point of view, Sixt and Europcar do not do better than Hertz in terms of the number of high-quality vehicles: Sixt tends to have a larger selection of cars outside of Volkswagen AG, especially in the small to compact class (Polo, Golf). We often noticed Europcar with Opel Grandlands or Mokkas. As seen in our photos, offers Avis/Budget a wide range of seats in the simple classes: So the probability is high that you will get a Leon when you (like us) have booked the Leon class.

Our Seat Leon for €35 including insurance for 3 days

We rented the “Seat Leon” category from Avis/Budget via Check24 for 3 days for €35 including all insurance. While we have booked early enough and also rented in mid-March (outside the main season). As a surcharge at the local rental station, only the second driver with a total of a good 20 € was due. Our Leon was a 1.2 TSI with a good 100 hp and a manual 6-speed gearbox. The extras included automatic air conditioning, rear parking beeper, cruise control and the infotainment system with Apple CarPlay / Android Auto on board: So we didn’t need a sat nav and were able to easily navigate using Google Maps via Apple CarPlay. The car had about 18,000km on the clock and was in top condition, which we couldn’t say about the Toyota Auris from Hertz in Greece with only 10,000km.

Just don’t get ripped off with insurance companies on site!

The game is always the same: The best way to book is via the Check24 rental car comparison, conveniently online at home. The filters are set in such a way that comprehensive insurance without a deductible is included. However, this comes directly from Check24 or the rental car broker. On site, however, the rental staff tries everything to ensure that you take out another fully comprehensive insurance without self-service with the rental company (in our case Avis/Budget). The Avis/Budget employee had started the interview guide for selling insurance, but quickly realized that we knew the process from previous rentals and then gave up quickly and politely. As in our negative example from InterRent, this is not a matter of course!

Important: set the filter “in the terminal”!

At Check24 and other comparison portals, you can often search for “lessor in the terminal”. This is incredibly important, especially in Palma at the airport: the multi-storey car park with most rental cars is extremely easy to reach with a walk of about 2 minutes. But if you catch a landlord outside the airport area, one will first by shuttle brought there. This is annoying, cumbersome and, in the case of short returns before departure, takes up a dangerous amount of time. All well-known rental companies at Palma Airport are located directly at the airport. Attention: Providers such as OK Rent a Car, Click&Rent or Drivalia are located outside the airport with a shuttle transfer! That’s cumbersome, but doesn’t necessarily mean that the landlord is worse. For example, OK Rent a Car has a very good fleet of vehicles with some models (eg 1-series BMW) with automatic transmission.

Rental car return at Palma airport extremely quick & easy

If you rent from a landlord who right at the airport is located, the return is really simple and quick. Follow the “Rental Car Return” signs and drive into the appropriate parking garage. Traces are clearly marked for each landlord. The barriers open automatically by license plate scan. If you are in a hurry, you don’t have to have an employee log the return, you can Just throw in the key or hand it in directly at the counter in the multi-storey car park!