What’s behind the car rental rates at LAX?

On The Spot by L.A. Times Travel editor Catharine Hamm

Question: What has happened to the car rental rates at LAX? Last July, I paid about $25 per day for 16 days, including all fees and taxes, and this July, it is more than $1,000 at all vendors for the same car and length of time.

– Brian Filsinger, Albany, N.Y.

Answer: Travelers who need to rent a car have reached an unfortunate intersection.

The first leg is everybody’s favorite scapegoat these days: the economy. Before credit dried up, rental car companies used to buy big fleets. Nowadays? Not so much. Enter the laws of supply and demand. Furthermore, your rental car, although not a clunker, may have as many as 40,000 miles on it, said Chris Brown, editor of Auto Rental News, a Torrance-based trade publication that serves the auto rental industry. “I know it stinks, but that’s the way it is,” Brown said.

Perhaps, but maybe not as much as your own car stinks.

On the other hand, my own car, which does stink, doesn’t have what seems to be an endless series of taxes and fees. Taxing authorities — whether they’re airport or local entities — have zeroed in on rental cars as a way to fund certain projects. If you rent at LAX, your bill will show a newish $10 charge for “CFC” — a customer (sometimes called “consolidated”) facility charge. Since it was introduced in July 2007, that fee has generated nearly $25 million in its first fiscal year. Those funds are supposed to be put toward a rental car facility where all agencies will be gathered, although there’s not yet a timeline for this, said Tom Winfrey, an LAX spokesman.

From a customer convenience standpoint, the all-under-one-roof rental mini-mall eliminates the multiple rental car shuttles zooming by, each with its own brand.

The downside? Renting a Nissan Versa from May 27 to 30 at the Kansas City, Mo., airport, which has a relatively new and handsome consolidated rental car facility, runs $72 a day, including a $9-a-day CFC. Also tucked into that price: a $12 arena fee, $4.53 vehicle license recovery fee, $6 trans-facility charge, $17.21 airport access fee and $15.95 in sales tax — almost $65 of your three-day $216 fee, about a third of your total.

What’s a consumer to do? Jim Gaz, senior director of global hospitality, travel and entertainment at J.D. Power & Associates, notes that neighborhood rental car companies tend to be a little less expensive. For example, if you look for that May 27 to 30 time period, an Avis rental for a subcompact car at LAX costs $213 but is $87 at the Avis on Lake Avenue in Pasadena.

If you can find your way to a neighborhood rental location using public transportation, you can save yourself big bucks. And if you can use public transportation to get someplace, maybe you can use it to get every place. I did just that on a recent trip to Kansas City. I made just one tiny mistake: My shoes weren’t made for walking, so I had to buy a new pair. They cost more than the rental car, but they didn’t have 40,000 miles on them. And unlike a rental car, they got to come home with me.

Have a travel dilemma? Write to travel@latimes.com

[Graphic: Robert Neubecker / For The Times]

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 10:00 am by Catharine Hamm and is filed under Los Angeles, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.