When traveling to nearby states (or even Europe or modern locations with Lyft/Uber) is it smarter to rent or just use ride apps?
Making the wrong decision can make you feel like you wasted some serious cash.
On our recent 6 night trip to Palm Springs, CA we faced this dilemna but arrived so last into PSP that our decision was to just Lyft to hotel, thus Lyft everywhere.
As we took the half hour drive to our hotel, I wondered whether we’d save more money and enjoy ourselves more if we had rented a car.
Here’s what I discovered looking back! If you have good/bad experiences on the pros/cons of rentals vs ride apps, let us know in the comments!
Top Reasons Lyft Was a Good Idea
(We’ll stick with Lyft over Uber for 2 reasons. 1. Their corporate image has been pretty awful, and 2. With our Chase Card we get 15% off Lyft Pink now, so that makes Lyft easily our favorite ride share app.)
- We never had to worry about directions
- You can sleep on your ride
- Chatting with the driver helps you learn the locations!
- We could do happy hours and not worry about driving after
- Never worry about parking, it’s door to door service.
Probably the biggest advantage was taking 20 minute naps in between long hikes and by boyfriends golf outings. However another advantage was the easy access to country clubs. For example I met DearBlogger out at Heritage Palms golf club one evening for a late golf lesson and they let me in right away in the Lyft, didn’t even have to say which golf outing we were for.
Total costs for Lyft during our 6 night stay were: $194.25
| 18.84 |
| 23.27 |
| 32.68 |
| 9.03 |
| 6.54 |
| 6.74 |
| 6.76 |
| 9.29 |
| 9.65 |
| 30.59 |
| 23.78 |
| 7.86 |
| 9.2 |
Top 5 Reasons Renting a Car Could Have Been Fun
- Actually driving around helps you get to know a location
- Feeling like we were at home
- On far out locations such as at a dinner we attended at “The Quarry” in La Quinta, the Lyft could not find our drop off or pickup, so having a car could have solved this.
- Potential money saver…we’ll estimate this below
- Being able to drive to further out to see friends say 1-2 hours away without racking up costs.
So clearly there are some neat experiences that come from renting a car, just don’t rent a car to drive from Marseille to Nice as we found out (post on that to come). You get more familiar with the place, or maybe you’re just a Dad who loves shlepping everyone around while telling the same old stories.
Total cost if we had rented a car, from the Hertz website, was about $400-450 per week for every compact sedan style car:
So all in all, we saved about $200 going with Lyft vs renting a car!
Conclusion: Share Your Experiences
Obviously some trips differ in where you go once you land. We stayed pretty local through the whole trip to Palm Springs. If you’re landing in Colorado and driving to Vail, then perusing the mountains on your own, a rental car could easily win. But there’s always the worry of damaging it!
Have you had good times doing ride share apps in strange new locations? Has renting a car been your favorite mode of transportation? Let us know your stories in the comments below!