Why is bike hire so expensive?

[ChrisF]

Just booking a bike for a week in Southern Spain - lucky me! - and an AL road bike is around 125 euros for the week. But in the same week I can hire a car for less than 50 euros. Even a newish car from a reputable hire company can be less than the bike.
It's not just in Spain, seems the same wherever I go. The price for a week's car hire is around 1% of the price of the car new; for a bike it's around 10-12% . Why? I know the car hire companies make more profit from add-ons but even so, the difference is extraordinary.

[philvantwo]

Hire car is on a lease so no cash is tied up. Bikes are more than likely purchased, €125 to use and abuse a £2.5k bike for a week!! Take your own and spend £120 extra on air fares! Oh a crap mountain bike in Split was £8 a day!!

[eileithyia]

We hire regularly from a company in Mallorca, bikes are always delivered clean and maintained. On return they are cleaned checked over with those who run the company working both early and late EVERY day, the particular company we used delivers all over the island, recently coming to collect our bikes at 6pm with still another pick to do in the north of the island before returning to their base at Felanitx. They also run an emergency back up service should you have a major mechanical breakdown to replace or repair bike and get you back on the road.
That sort of service doesn't come cheap.

We hired a car on a couple of occasions, for a day each time when weather was inclement and we wanted to get out without getting soaking wet and cold. The initial cheap cost soon accelerate when extras like a full tank of fuel was added on (yes I know we would have put fuel in anyway but possible not quite that much ...we went around the block to use the fuel we had paid for at the end of the day), had we been putting the fuel in ourselves we might not have used a full tank...

[Samuel D]

Economies of scale. You may also ask why you can buy a brand-new Dacia car for €6,000 euros when a common road bike with comparatively trivial engineering in it costs €2,000 (and plenty cost more than the Dacia nowadays).

Consider that the car rental market is large, competitive, and dominated by global companies (like Hertz) that enjoy tremendous economies of scale. Cars themselves tolerate any amount of misuse (which they surely get in the rental market) as long as you dump the accumulated wear and tear on someone else within a couple of years (which they do by selling off the cars).

Road bikes, by comparison, are delicate, highly strung creatures that need frequent fettling to keep in presentable order. The customer service is expected to be personal and involve fitting, all of which is time-consuming. Insurance is no doubt expensive too, since people often come off road bikes and might then blame the set-up.

Perhaps most importantly, the rental road bikes may earn their keep a few times in the summer and then lie idle. Hire cars may have a few rentals per week all year around. Niche versus mainstream, with all the efficiency differences that entails.

I doubt anyone is making a fortune renting out bicycles.

Nonetheless, it is amazing how cheap car rentals can be. I hired a car from Europcar for €10 a day in Cyprus, and that really did turn out to be the cost (except the fuel I used). It was a horrible car to drive (a Kia), but it was a real car. Incredible.

[whoof]

Perhaps because bike hire companies don't have a secondary income scamming their customers for 'damage' when they return the hired vehicle.

I once hired a van for a weekend for £99 which seemed reasonable. The guy booking it out ran around it like Usain Bolt and said they were only interest in major damage. When I return it the woman booking it back in said ' there's a scuff on the front bumper'. She spotted this from 50 metres away although I couldn't see it until we were closer. It was probably there when I hired it and a quick spray with back to black would have sorted it. The result was I had to pay £250 excess to 'repair' it, I'd bet my house that this was never done.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/advic ... r-act-out/

[hamster]

Car rental is always built around hidden charges - add fuel, insurance, CDW etc etc and you pay a lot more. Bait and switch.

Bike rental you get what you pay for.

[ChrisF]

Car rental is always built around hidden charges - add fuel, insurance, CDW etc etc and you pay a lot more. Bait and switch.
Bike rental you get what you pay for.

Yes, I know about the extras but even if they double the cost that's still only 2% of the price of a new car. Compared to 10% or more for a bike.

Perhaps because bike hire companies don't have a secondary income scamming their customers for 'damage' when they return the hired vehicle.

Last time I hired one in Majorca, I had broken spoke which immediately jammed in the derailleur and broke it. Couldn't ride the bike, had to call the hire place. They came out and swapped the bike but when I got home I found I had been billed for replacement parts, labour, and a call-out charge!
I argued about this and eventually they dropped the parts & labour, but I still had to pay the call-out.

Hire cars may have a few rentals per week all year around.

Unlikely in holiday resorts. Anyway you only need 10 weeks of one season's hire to pay for a new bike. And bikes are cheaper to store than cars.

Anyway, enough ranting from me, I'm off to enjoy a week's sunshine tomorrow

[simonhill]

Another thing - you can take your own bike fairly easily and fairly cheaply, which means most wouldn't hire. Not so with a car.

For €125, with a bit of uncertainty about whether it will be just right, I'd rather take my own.

[hamster]

Firstly, car hire companies do not buy cars for anything like retail price. They also don't pay VAT.
Secondly, much of it is a wheeze to produce good quality secondhand cars - rental on small islands is cheap as mileages are kept low.

As a result, this is somewhat strange economics, but compare prices to day rental at say Heathrow...

[Cyril Haearn]

Car rental is always built around hidden charges - add fuel, insurance, CDW etc etc and you pay a lot more. Bait and switch.

Bike rental you get what you pay for.

Love bikes hate cars

[hamster]

Car rental is always built around hidden charges - add fuel, insurance, CDW etc etc and you pay a lot more. Bait and switch.
Bike rental you get what you pay for.

Yes, I know about the extras but even if they double the cost that's still only 2% of the price of a new car. Compared to 10% or more for a bike.

Indeed, but let's just imagine that each rental takes 20 minutes of administration time. That is a fixed cost, regardless of the value of the thing being rented - as a result, the bike comes out costlier compared to its purchase price. That's why nobody rents out Bic biros (or TVs these days)

[whoof]

[Last time I hired one in Majorca, I had broken spoke which immediately jammed in the derailleur and broke it. Couldn't ride the bike, had to call the hire place. They came out and swapped the bike but when I got home I found I had been billed for replacement parts, labour, and a call-out charge!
I argued about this and eventually they dropped the parts & labour, but I still had to pay the call-out.
[:D

But the bike wasn't like that when you hired it and any damage will have been repaired before they could hire the bike out to the next person.

Trading Standards are currently investigate one hire company and an estimate of £30 million has been put on the bill for compensation and legal costs if they have been found to been charging for repairs not made. If this does occur the cost of a hire car may well increase as companies will no longer be able to make money from either not repairing damage or charging multiple customers for the same existing damage.

[mjr]

Perhaps because bike hire companies don't have a secondary income scamming their customers for 'damage' when they return the hired vehicle.

Last time I hired one in Majorca, I had broken spoke which immediately jammed in the derailleur and broke it. Couldn't ride the bike, had to call the hire place. They came out and swapped the bike but when I got home I found I had been billed for replacement parts, labour, and a call-out charge!
I argued about this and eventually they dropped the parts & labour, but I still had to pay the call-out.

That's a shame. I think I've only once paid for damaging a bike and that was definitely our fault (bottle of water fell off the pannier rack and broke the chainguard). The last time I broke a hire bike, it was by dropping its chain between cassette and spokes on a rough road (the low limit wasn't set correctly IMO). I called the shop and they brought a replacement bike out in a van and swapped them over - not exactly the same/ideal size, but rideable. We waited for about 40 minutes, taking the chance to pop into nearby shops and so on. I've usually had to wait much longer for car breakdown services on the few occasions I've used them and you can't as easily push a car into a nearby village. So I feel most bike hire isn't bad value. Maybe it's different in places like Majorca where maybe they think some people are going specifically to ride and so they can charge more?

[[XAP]Bob]

I rented a bike for 5 weeks in Helsinki quite a while ago (8 years?).

I don’t recall how much it cost, partly because I claimed it on company expenses (instead of taxis and the like). I do remember it was technically out of season, so I had to work to get them to hire me the bike rather than sell it to me...

Given that MiniBob and MicroBob’s First cycles were end of season rental purchases I suggest that most places don’t store bikes over the off season (although the one local to me is staying open over this winter, on good days), but we’ll them.

Demand is fairly low, and fairly picky, for longer hires... people are much more likely to take an Allen key to a bike than a spanner to a car - all things which are likely to increase the admin/hire check portion of the cost.