Salzburg airport (SZG) is Austria’s second largest airport and is located 3km west of Salzburg city centre and 2km from the Austrian-German border. It principally serves Salzburg and the numerous ski resorts in the Ski Amade region which is the largest network of linked ski resorts in Europe.
Salzburg Airport (Photo: Iain Cameron via Flickr/ CC BY 2.0)
In order to reach the car rental companies, you need to make a short walk out of arrivals along a covered path that leads to the offices on the ground floor of the car park opposite the airport terminal. For those visitors living outside of the EU, it is necessary to present an International Driver’s Permit in order to rent a car. Luckily, IDP’s are affordable and can be acquired from automobile organisations.
TravelMag.com have looked into rates, selection of cars, customer reviews and company policies of all the car rental companies at Salzburg Airport to work out the best three options. The results of our findings are below.
Most Affordable – Alamo
From our research work, Alamo is the best company to find cheap car rentals at Salzburg Airport. It is also the highest-ranked rental car company at SZG on popular car rental site, rentalcar.com with a score of 9.3 out of 10. Renters approved of the helpfulness of the staff, the cleanliness of the vehicles and Alamo also scored highly on value for money – key in this category. Alamo’s SZG’s fleet includes the Skoda Citigo, Volkswagen Polo, Opel Astra and popular sedans and SUVs like the Mazda CX-3. Even if Alamo has the cheapest car rentals, it’s hard to find anything under €150 per day during peak season.
Best for Luxury – Sixt
Not only does Sixt rank highly at Salzburg Airport by customer feedback, it also has one of the best selections of luxury rental cars with a long list of high-performance German vehicles. They have an Audi A6, Volkswagen Tiguan, Mercedes Benz C-class and if you’re planning on going off-road in style, a compact 5-seater like the BMV X1. Sixt’s base price is never cheap, but it does include all insurance, liability coverage, extras upfront and a peerless level of respect and politeness towards their customers. Sixt offices are open from 7.30am – 8pm in the week and on the weekends fro m 8pm – 7pm.
Best for Minivans – Europcar
Europcar slightly edged a number of other car rental companies in the minivan category. When compared to Hertz, for example, the prices on offer from both companies are comparable. However, Europcar’s fleet is more extensive. Apart from a number of SUVs, it has large people-carriers capable of seating up to 9 passengers and vehicles like the Seat Alhambra that is as equally adept on Austria’s motorways as climbing mountainous roads. Booster seats and baby seats are available for €12 per day while adding an extra driver is relatively cheap (8€ per day) and is the surcharge for being under 25 (8€ per day).