Auckland ranked seventh most expensive city in the world to hire a car

Holidaying isn’t exactly cheap. And as it turns out, vacationing while hiring a rental car in Auckland is far from it.

The City of Sails was ranked the seventh most expensive place in the world to hire a rental car in a market research study done last year.

A study conducted by Compare the Market looked at the average daily rental prices for a ‘standard’ car. A standard car would fit five adults and three bags. Average cost was then calculated by looking at daily rental prices over September of last year.

For Auckland, the results aren’t overly fantastic. The average daily price of a standard car came out at a touch under NZ$125, ranking it the seventh priciest city out of the 47 analysed.

A quick scan over some of New Zealand’s more popular rental car companies and prices of all sized vehicles seem to be trending up. Even a small hatchback can set you back nearly $100 per day.

Of course, the global pandemic hasn’t helped New Zealand’s cause. With basically zero international travellers the past year-and-a-bit, there has been no demand for rental cars. Ergo, prices increase.

Singapore (which, yes, is actually a country) was the most expensive. There you will have to fork out roughly $170 for a day of rental car fun. Fukuoka in Japan and Honolulu in Hawaii rounded out the high-cost podium.

The boys across the ditch managed to one-up us again, though it is perhaps a good thing this time. That’s because Melbourne was ranked the fifth-most expensive city in the world to rent a car. Sydney also made it on the list, albeit lower than Auckland at 12th.

If you want to pay a measly $20 a day to loan a standard-sized car, Madrid is the city to visit. The Spanish capital was comfortably the cheapest city on the ranking list, coming out ahead of Lima in Peru and Cancún in Mexico.