Holiday Autos

The largest online leisure car rental broker in the world, Holiday Autos prides itself on offering some of the best fully inclusive car hire prices in more than 4,000 locations around the world.

As a broker business, the company works with suppliers across the globe to ensure high quality and high standards of safety in car hire at a low cost.

The company rents vehicles of a range of shapes and sizes, from small cars to minivans and convertibles, designed to cater to a variety of needs.

Part of the lastminute.com group, Holiday Autos was the first car rental company to offer pre-paid and fully inclusive cheap car rental packages back in 1987, transforming the industry.

Before this, holiday makers tended to wait until they got abroad before arranging their car rental, which, with the addition of language barriers, could often make organising a cheap hire car a complicated business, according to Holiday Autos.

The company started out selling its products through travel agents in the UK - a practice it still uses - before expanding into Europe and then the rest of the world.

Holiday Autos now has corporate offices in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

The company also has joint ventures in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Israel, while there are sales agents in a further 23 countries.

Today, the company arranges cheap car rental for nearly one million customers around the globe every year and boasted an annual group turnover of £158 million in the business year 2002-3.

Holiday Autos was then bought by lastminute.com in 2003 for £43 million.

With its groundbreaking pre-paid and fully inclusive packages, Holiday Autos introduced a best price guarantee, which offered to match or beat cheaper like-for-like quotes.

The company was also the first car rental company to introduce an optional 'no insurance excess' policy, or DER, as an add-on to the rental package, which covers costly insurance excess charges if a claim is made.

Holiday Autos has a mission statement to "be the world's leading leisure car rental organisation through excelling in efficiency, customer care, value and innovation" and has received a large number of awards over the years for its cheap car rental services.

It has won all of the UK's major travel awards for leisure car rental and has also received major accolades in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland.

The company has distribution partnerships with low cost airlines in Europe including Italy's Volarweb, Belgium's Virgin Express, Holland's Basiq and the UK's Jet2.

If you are planning a trip abroad and are thinking of renting a car, remember to check out the car hire rates through Major Travel to find the best cheap car rental available.