With over a 100 car hire companies on Tenerife as well as a bewildering number of car hire agents, deciding which car hire company to choose can be a mind-numbing experience.
Do you opt for a familiar name, and then discover an equally reputable local car hire company is much cheaper? Do you choose a firm only to find when you arrive that they don’t have an office near to where you’re staying?
At ‘Island Drives’ we believe that if we’re encouraging you to explore Tenerife’s countryside, then we should also provide some information to help you decide which car hire company on Tenerife is best suited to your particular needs, so we’ve compiled this guide to help the decision making process.

It seems common sense, but having read the occasional report on travel watchdog websites of people having their hire car towed away, I’m not so sure. Treat parking exactly as you would at home.

Don’t park on yellow lines and be careful where you see blue lines; these usually mean you need to feed the parking meter.

Above all don’t assume that because everyone else is double parked, parking on crossings, corners and anywhere there is the smallest space, that you can do the same, unless you want to invoke sod’s law.

It’s worth checking with your car insurance company if your policy covers you when driving abroad. If it does, you might not need insurance through the car hire firm on Tenerife.

Petrol is considerably cheaper in the Canary Islands than in many other places; at the time of writing, around €0.85 per litre for unleaded (sin plomo 98), obviously this fluctuates. The island is well served by petrol stations, so most of the time you don’t have to worry about running out of fuel. However there are some very long stretches where there aren’t any stations and we’ve included warnings about these areas in our guide; “Real Tenerife Island Drives”.

There are also substantial differences in prices between different companies on Tenerife. PCAN and Texaco are usually a few cents cheaper per litre than BP, Shell and Repsol with CEPSA falling somewhere in between.

Note: The quotes for hiring a car on Tenerife for one week are based on a Group B vehicle and are taken from car hire firm’s websites. It’s always worth asking about discounts. Where a company has included the price in sterling we’ve included their figures. Last prices check was January 2012.

We’ve concentrated initially on car hire companies on Tenerife with websites for two reasons:

• If you’re arranging car hire on Tenerife before you travel, then obviously doing it online is an easy process.
  
• In such a competitive market, in our opinion, having a website demonstrates an understanding of today’s customer requirements, which is an integral part of good customer service.

We welcome your comments on any car hire experiences you've had on Tenerife which may help others to make an informed decision.