Tampa car hire work around.

[RC22]

Prices for next August for a 7 seater (and SUVS) are astronomical. £1500 for 7 seater van/Pacifica. This is for TPA pick up and drop off.

Booking through Andy (fill in manual request form on his site) and change pick up to 'Hertz Waterside' office (20 mins in a cab from airport) and TPA drop off and the price drops to £540 (2 weeks)

Much better. Only downside is that the Waterside office closes at 5pm so if your flight lands later on (like ours does) you would have to pick up next day. Luckily we haven't booked accommodation yet so are spending 1st night in a Tampa hotel before picking Van up up in the morning the next day and off to a villa.

Hopefully this will help others - you will have to request details from Andy at discountfloridacarhire as it's an offline price he will check for you.

You can get the deal via Auto Europe too but you have to pay upfront. With Andy there's no deposit and no fee to change bookings so I have booked with Andy (his customer service is excellent) and will amend booking if needs be (if for example TPA pick up prices fall later on)

Worth checking for Tampa flights - I know similar 'hacks' exist for MCO and Miami for certain dates/pick ups.

[RC22]

I re-jigged my booking a bit to save the faff of staying in Tampa the night and picking car up from office couple of miles away from airport.

Instead I split the booking into a one day booking TPA to Disney for 1 day then 13 days Disney to TPA - all same vehicle so they should just let me keep the vehicle when I roll up to Disney with the paperwork after a day.

All helpfully sorted by Andy at DFCH (did a manual request via his site and he mailed me the offline prices) he is a superstar and if you aren't at least getting a quote from this guy then you're missing out!

[llamala]

We have just booked flight with Virgin\ delta to Tampa, so the next thing is 2 vehicles for 10 people plus luggage. Last time we had a 12 seater mini bus which was brilliant but these are scarce in Tampa airport and very expensive so will look at doing what you suggest

[RC22]

Yeah, might be worth booking 2 vehicles for one night TPA to Orlando area then get the 12 seater at the place you drop off the 2 vehicles for 13 nights and take back to TPA.