Car rental services are booming during the April 30th holiday.

(Baonghean.vn) -Trung's family in Van Tien - Hung Dung (Vinh City) has been in the car rental business for over a decade. Trung said that while last year the price was around 1.2-1.5 million VND per day for a 7-seater car without a driver, this year it has increased to no less than 2 million VND. Even with the higher prices, it's still difficult to rent a car.

Not far from Mr. Trung's house is Mr. Hoang Van Chien's house, which also offers car rentals. Mr. Chien said: "My family has only been in the car rental service for less than a year, but during the recent Tet holiday and the April 30th holiday this year, we had a lot of customers. Since the beginning of the year, we've had customers renting cars almost every day to go to temples. As for the April 30th and May 1st holidays, customers have been booking cars for over a month in advance." A 7-seater Innova for self-driving costs 2.2 million VND per day, excluding fuel and fees. For cars with a driver, the price is calculated per kilometer and also varies depending on the type of car, whether new or old.

At Mr. Chien's family car rental business, we met Mr. Tuan from Ben Thuy – a customer who had come to rent a car for a trip. Mr. Tuan said: "I've long intended to rent a car to go to Da Nang to see the fireworks, but due to scheduling conflicts with my wife and me, there were no 4-seater cars available. In the end, I had to rent a 7-seater, which was both more expensive and consumed more fuel. But even so, being able to rent a car at this time is still fortunate."



Demand for rental cars for travel has increased, and although prices have risen, many rental agencies still don't have cars available.

A friend in Yen Thanh asked us to rent a car to go to Hoi An Old Town, so we called Mr. Khoa – the owner of a long-established car rental business in Hung Phuc ward. After several attempts to arrange a meeting, we finally met him and learned that there were no cars available for rent at that time. Finally, thanks to a referral from an acquaintance, we met Mr. Hai in Ha Huy Tap ward. After returning from working abroad in South Korea and saving up a considerable amount of capital, he and his wife decided to buy a car, initially for family use, and later for rental purposes. Initially, they only had a Honda Civic, but after seeing the good demand for this service, they had someone in Ho Chi Minh City buy two more cars, a used Vios and an Innova. Mr. Hai shared: "I can't always drive for customers, so for self-drive car rentals, the top priority is still customers who are professional drivers for government agencies, followed by those we know. And even if we know them, the requirements we set are that they must have an ID card, a driver's license, and a deposit." Fortunately, we were able to rent a Honda Civic for our friend for 1.7 million VND/day.

According to our investigation, this year the prices of rental cars are 20-30% higher than at this time last year, and about 50% higher than usual, or even 70% higher in some places. This year's price increase is due to a sudden surge in demand for sightseeing and tourism, despite the significant increase in private car ownership in Vinh City recently. Because of this high demand, all rental car contracts for the April 30th holiday are not for short periods of 1 hour or 1-2 days; customers must rent cars for 4-5 days or more. At this point, rental car contracts are almost fully booked, and many businesses have had to refuse customers because there are no more cars available and rental schedules are completely full.

However, according to the experience of Mr. Thang – a driver for the North Central Region Maritime Security Company – when renting a vehicle, customers need to thoroughly inspect the vehicle, especially the machinery; they should carefully negotiate with the rental company about any malfunctions and review the terms of the contract to avoid potential problems.

Thu Huyen