I’m coming today with a new travel hack that’s changed the way I think about summer travel. The short version? Step 1: Go to Florida. Step 2. Leave.
What do I mean? Before I explain that, I’ll start at the beginning for how I found this hack. I needed to travel to Washington DC and planned to rent a car for a road trip down to Florida. I couldn’t do it. Literally no rental car company would allow me to pick up a rental car anywhere outside of Florida and drop it off in Florida.
At first I thought this was due to a glitch. Then a regulation. As I tested and watched over the next few weeks and experimented with different pickup and dropoff locations, I came to realize something else – this was market-driven.
If you live in Kentucky or Louisiana and need to take a cruise out of Orlando, which would you rather do – buy a plane ticket for every member of your family, plus luggage upgrades, or rent a car and drive seven hours? Renting a car would be dramatically cheaper and offer a lot more flexibility, and potentially even some fun along the way. I’m convinced that this is the core of what happens – too many people are trying to do exactly what I was planning.
In and of itself, that’s not a helpful observation. What IS helpful, though? That brings us back to my unusual discovery – the travel hack:
Renting a car IN Florida and taking it OUT of Florida is HEAVILY subsidized. It’s dramatically cheaper during June to rent a car in Orlando and drop it off in Atlanta, Myrtle Beach, or Washington DC than it is to drop it off in Orlando again.
I needed to get from Washington DC to Florida, but I wanted to have a road trip. I found it was shockingly affordable to fly from DC to Miami, then drive to Atlanta, then fly to Miami again! Maybe not the most efficient of routes, but the flights are cheap, and the rental car rate is the lowest I’ve ever seen, about $10 a day. I still get my road trip, with just a few more airport visits baked in. It’s not uncommon to get flights to or from Florida for $50 or less, so a few extra flights could easily come in as less than the rental car savings.
For those with the time to spare, the best way to optimize this hack would be to fly to Florida, rent a car, and then drive back to wherever you may call home. Your mileage may vary (sorry Seattle residents!).
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