In four out of six airports surveyed by Motors, renting a car through Ryanair's website is significantly more costly than booking it directly with their car rental partners Hertz. In some cases the difference was up to EUR75 over a sample four day rental period.
For the survey, six airports serviced by Ryanair were chosen at random. The airports were Luton, Paris Beauvais, Malaga, Bristol, Glasgow Prestwick and Barcelona.
The cars were to be rented for a four-day period, collecting the car at 10 a.m. on May 14th and returning it to the airport at 10 a.m. on the 18th. In each case three classes of cars were surveyed: Economy, Compact and Family classes.
Booking via Ryanair involved clicking through to the Hertz site using a link on the Ryanair web page.
Details of when and where the car was to be picked up were then inputted, including the relevant Ryanair flight number.
Cars prices direct from Hertz were found by logging on directly to the company's website, and not entering any flight number.
The largest variation in price was found in booking cars at Bristol Airport. Clicking through from Ryanair's website to Hertz, the cost of renting a Ford Mondeo for the four-day period was EUR206.94, but booking it directly with Hertz it cost just EUR132.17, a saving of EUR74.77.
Similar savings were available by booking directly through Hertz for cars at Luton Airport near London, while smaller savings of about 20 per cent were available at Beauvais and Glasgow airports.
However, the opposite was the case in Malaga Airport, where booking through Ryanair, as opposed to Hertz directly, uncovered significant savings with an Economy class Opel Corsa EUR22.94 cheaper, a Compact class Focus EUR47.03 cheaper and a Monde EUR122.94 cheaper if a Ryanair flight number was used, and the car booked on a click through from Ryanair to Hertz.
Conducting a similar search clicking through from Aer Lingus site produced no discernible difference between the price being charged by Hertz direct and the price being offered if an Aer Lingus flight code was quoted.
Responding to the differences, Ryanair said it offers great value to all customers, offering a wide variety of cars all at competitive and all-inclusive prices at every Ryanair airport. Hertz said its own internal checks showed cheaper deals were on offer through the Ryanair site in five out of six cases.