Is in-terminal car hire always dearer?
Not always. In this sweep in-terminal brands priced above other desk types at 11 of the 14 airports that had both. Munich was level. Bangkok and Amsterdam went the other way.
Research
In-terminal vs off-airport car hire prices
Desk location against price and rating, brand by brand, at 18 airports in one November 2026 snapshot.
By the DayRunner team ·
In-terminal car hire brands priced above the rest of the market at most of the 18 airports we swept. The median in-terminal brand sat 6% above its airport's market median. The median shuttle-bus brand sat 36% below. At the 14 airports with both, in-terminal brands were dearer at 11, level at Munich, and cheaper at Amsterdam and Bangkok.
This is one Rate Pulse snapshot of rentalcars.com, 7 Nov 2026, in a November shoulder period. It shows what desk location went with in those two weeks. It doesn't show why.
How we got these numbers
- One snapshot: rentalcars.com search results, searched from New Zealand, swept 6 to 7 Nov 2026 (NZ time).
- 3-day hires picked up at the airport on each of 14 days, 8 to 21 Nov 2026. Daily rate = 3-day total ÷ 3, in NZD.
- Price index = the brand's median daily rate ÷ the market median, for the same car type and pick-up day. 1.00 is level with the market, 0.80 is 20% under.
- Desk type is as rentalcars.com lists it: in the terminal, shuttle bus, car rental centre, meet and greet, downtown, or outside the terminal.
- Brands with fewer than 10 offers are left out, the same rule the dashboards use. One brand with no price index is also out. That leaves 257 of 264 brands across the 18 airports.
- Ratings are rentalcars.com customer ratings out of 10, used only where a brand had 100 or more reviews.
- Advertised prices, not what brands earned. Full method: How Rate Pulse works.
Desk type, price and rating across all 18 airports
| Desk type | Brands | Share of offers | Median price index | Median rating (100+ reviews) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In the terminal | 114 | 57% | 1.06 | 8.4 (104 brands) |
| Car rental centre | 32 | 17% | 1.01 | 7.4 (31 brands) |
| Meet and greet | 8 | 1% | 1.05 | 8.5 (5 brands) |
| Downtown | 14 | 5% | 0.89 | 7.6 (11 brands) |
| Outside the terminal | 3 | under 1% | 0.87 | 8.4 (1 brand) |
| Shuttle bus | 86 | 20% | 0.64 | 8.0 (68 brands) |
Share of offers counts all 91,744 offers in the sweep. Meet and greet, downtown and outside the terminal have few brands, so treat their medians as rough.
In the terminal vs every other desk type, by airport
Median price index for each group. Gap is in index points: +46 means in-terminal brands' median was 46 points higher.
| Airport | In-terminal brands | In-terminal median | Other desk brands | Other desk median | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auckland | 10 | 1.02 | 9 | 0.87 | +15 |
| Amsterdam | 6 | 0.96 | 1 | 1.48 | -52 |
| Athens | 13 | 1.15 | 13 | 0.69 | +46 |
| Barcelona | 9 | 0.99 | 6 | 0.46 | +53 |
| Bangkok | 7 | 1.00 | 5 | 1.12 | -12 |
| Brisbane | 9 | 1.06 | 10 | 0.52 | +54 |
| Paris CDG | 6 | 1.04 | 0 | none | n/a |
| Christchurch | 10 | 1.12 | 7 | 0.75 | +37 |
| Bali | 0 | none | 3 | 1.00 | n/a |
| Dublin | 0 | none | 9 | 1.06 | n/a |
| Rome | 0 | none | 19 | 0.57 | n/a |
| London Heathrow | 1 | 1.13 | 10 | 1.01 | +12 |
| Lisbon | 10 | 1.11 | 14 | 0.61 | +50 |
| Madrid | 8 | 1.06 | 4 | 0.78 | +28 |
| Melbourne | 8 | 1.11 | 10 | 0.71 | +40 |
| Munich | 1 | 1.00 | 6 | 1.00 | 0 |
| Sydney | 7 | 1.04 | 10 | 0.88 | +17 |
| Queenstown | 9 | 1.08 | 7 | 0.75 | +33 |
Amsterdam's "other" group is a single meet-and-greet brand. London and Munich have one in-terminal brand each. Read those three rows as single brands, not a pattern.
Rome and Dublin have no in-terminal desks
Both list their main brands at a car rental centre. At Rome, the 14 car rental centre brands had a median index of 1.01. The 5 shuttle-bus brands had 0.24, so about a quarter of the market median. All 9 Dublin brands were at the car rental centre, median 1.06.
What stands out
The biggest gaps were at Brisbane (+54), Barcelona (+53), Lisbon (+50) and Athens (+46). At each one, in-terminal brands sat near or above the market and shuttle or downtown brands well under it.
Christchurch and Queenstown had gaps of +37 and +33. Auckland's was smaller at +15.
Bangkok went the other way. Its 5 non-terminal brands had a median index of 1.12, above the 7 in-terminal brands at 1.00.
Car rental centre brands had the lowest median rating of any big group, 7.4. Most of those brands are at Rome and Dublin, so this may say more about those two airports than about rental centres.
What operators can take from it
- Benchmark against brands at your own desk type first. An off-terminal brand at 0.75 might be level with its real competitors.
- Know your airport's gap. At Brisbane the gap was 54 points. At Sydney it was 17. The right discount for a shuttle desk depends on where you are.
- A shuttle desk didn't mean a poor rating. The median shuttle-bus brand still rated 8.0, and 18 of 63 rated above the median in-terminal brand at their own airport. See ratings vs price.
- Watch thin groups. Where a desk type has one or two brands, one brand's pricing sets the whole number.
Questions
Are shuttle-bus brands rated worse?
A little, on the median. In-terminal brands with 100 or more reviews had a median rating of 8.4 out of 10, shuttle-bus brands 8.0. Still, 18 of 63 shuttle-bus brands rated above the median in-terminal brand at their own airport.
What is a price index of 1.06?
The brand's median daily rate was 6% above the market median for the same car type and pick-up day. 1.00 is level with the market. See market rate index.
Sources
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