Renting separate cars in the U.K. and on the Continent would be even better. Our reader could get a

Editor's Note: This story was originally published on January 28, 2008. To see the most recent SmarterTravel airline discount tickets articles on related topics, please click on any of the following links: AskEd & AnswerEd , car rental , Europe .
On many European vacations, a one-way car rental is the most efficient way to cover a multi-country area without retracing your steps. The airline side of the deal is easy: Get an "open-jaw" ticket with the "going" portion from your home airport to the starting airline discount tickets point of your trip and the "return" portion from the endpoint of your trip back home. The fare is usually the sum of half of the round-trip fares between your home and the open-jaw points. airline discount tickets Then, you fill in the open-jaw gap by driving a rented car, one-way. I've done it many times, and a reader is interested. He asked: "If you rent a car in Scotland, can you return it to a location in Rome?"
The standard approach to rentals in Europe airline discount tickets is that you pay no drop-off or extra one-way fee as long as the pickup and drop-off points are in the same country. Thus, in France, when you start a rental in Paris, you pay essentially the same whether you return it in Paris, Nice, Bordeaux, or any other place where your rental company has an office except, possibly, for varying airport fees. However, if the pickup and drop-off points are in different airline discount tickets countries, airline discount tickets you pay extra. I made a quick check with Hertz for a sample nine-day trip in March with an economy car: Pickup and return in Paris or anywhere else in France, 354 (about $521 US; check XE.com for current exchange rates).
For longer periods, the French lease also permits no-charge pickup and drop-off anywhere in France. Outside France, you pay an extra $125 to $250 for either a pickup or drop-off, depending on the proximity to France. The Channel barrier
For this trip, our reader would be better off with a French airline discount tickets lease, starting at about $1,000 for up to 17 days in a compact car, plus pickup and drop-off fees of $275 at each end of the trip, for a total of around $1,550.
Renting separate cars in the U.K. and on the Continent would be even better. Our reader could get a one-week one-way car rental from Glasgow to Dover for 153 (about $312), take the ferry across, airline discount tickets and rent a one-way car from Calais to Rome for around $900 a week. Also, if the reader didn't want to spend a lot of time in France, he could take trains from France airline discount tickets to Italy and rent in Italy at the one-country rate. Arranging It
Clearly, one-way rentals are more complicated than conventional rentals. And some rental companies may offer special one-way deals that don't appear on all the websites. My suggestion is that the reader contact an agency that specializes in European car rentals, such as Auto Europe , which might well have access to better one-way rates. Auto Europe also handles airline discount tickets the French lease, should that be the best approach.
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