Short answer
Start from the floor: the vehicle's yearly fixed costs divided by the days you expect to rent it, plus the variable cost per rental day and the channel's commission.
Set a base price above that, raise it by season and event, discount longer rentals, require a minimum length in peak weeks and charge extras separately. While a season is on sale, revise weekly against booking lead time and fleet utilisation.
On this page
Every figure in this guide is an example for a compact car in a coastal market, in euros for illustration: swap in your own numbers before deciding anything. What carries over is the order: cost first, then the utilisation you expect, then the season. Operators who start from what the broker down the road charges end up renting their busiest month below cost.
What is the lowest daily price a vehicle can take?
The price that covers what the vehicle costs you in a year, spread over the days you will actually rent it. A parked car still pays its lease and its insurance, so divide by rented days, not by 365.
Example, with made-up figures, net of VAT or sales tax:
| Cost, per car per year | Example |
|---|---|
| Lease or depreciation | €3,600 |
| Insurance | €1,200 |
| Maintenance and tyres | €700 |
| Road tax, inspections, parking, share of premises and staff | €1,500 |
| Total fixed costs | €7,000 |
At a utilisation target of 60%, the car is rented 219 days a year (365 × 0.6). Fixed cost per rented day: €7,000 / 219 ≈ €32. Add the variable cost of each rental day, €5 in the example: a €12 clean spread over an average four-day rental, plus wear and consumables. Your floor is about €37 per day.
Then the channel. If a booking comes through a broker that keeps, say, 20% of the price, you need to charge €37 / 0.8 ≈ €46 to be left with €37. The same rate can pay on your own website and lose money on a comparison site; see how to get more direct bookings.
From floor to high-season rate, step by step
Work out a floor for each category
Run the sum above per category (compact car, SUV, 125cc scooter, boat), not for the fleet as a whole: an SUV with expensive cover and a scooter do not share a floor. Write down the utilisation you assumed; if the real figure comes in lower, the floor goes up.
Set a base price above the floor
The base price is an ordinary day with no season. In the example, €45: it leaves room over the €37 floor for unexpected empty days, breakdowns and whatever you did not count.
Map your season calendar
Your peak is whatever empties your lot: summer on a coast, winter at a ski resort, the dry season in the tropics, a race weekend or trade fair in a city. Then the in-between: shoulder months, Easter and school holidays in your customers' home countries, public holidays, local festivals. Start from the dates last year when you ran out of vehicles. This calendar is the backbone of seasonal pricing.
Give each season a percentage
Adjust the base price by a percentage per period instead of typing separate prices: when you change the base, every season moves with it. Holidays should replace the season they fall in, not stack on top of it.
Reward length and price the weekdays
Length tiers: a single day costs the most, a week costs less per day. And if Friday to Sunday sells out before Tuesday does, add a weekend uplift or a Monday-to-Thursday discount.
Require a minimum length in peak weeks
In the busiest weeks a one-day rental blocks the car for a customer who wanted seven, and costs you a full clean. A minimum rental period of three to seven days, depending on your market, protects your most valuable dates.
Charge separately for what costs you separately
Return at another branch (the one-way fee), child seat, additional driver, hotel delivery. Every per-day or per-rental extra is margin that does not depend on the rate: your ancillary revenue.
Worked example: one car, one year
The same car, €45 base price, using the percentages of Renviq's ready-made seasons, which follow a typical European coastal year (a starting point, not a market benchmark). The utilisation per season is made up too. If your peak is winter, shift the rows to your months.
| Season | Days in year | Utilisation | Price per day | Days rented | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low (Nov–Mar), −10% | 151 | 35% | €40.50 | 53 | €2,146.50 |
| No adjustment (Apr, May, Oct) | 92 | 60% | €45.00 | 55 | €2,475.00 |
| Shoulder (Jun, Sep), +10% | 60 | 75% | €49.50 | 45 | €2,227.50 |
| High (Jul–Aug), +25% | 62 | 95% | €56.25 | 59 | €3,318.75 |
| Full year | 365 | 58% | — | 212 | €10,167.75 |
Cost for the year: €7,000 fixed plus €5 × 212 days = €8,060. That leaves about €2,100 of margin per car before your own salary. Three things to read from it:
- Actual utilisation (58%) came in under the 60% the floor assumed. High season rescues it: had July and August sold at €45, the margin would fall by more than €600.
- In low season you can go below the full floor as long as you cover the variable cost, because the fixed costs are paid anyway. The year as a whole still has to cover them.
- 95% in the peak with everything booked by May usually means the +25% was too small.
Watch the season boundaries: a rental from 28 June to 3 July should charge the June days at the shoulder price and the July days at the high price. One flat "summer" rate either gives away the first peak days or scares off June customers.
How Renviq handles it
Renviq prices every booking from pricing rules, not from a separate spreadsheet. Exactly what is there:
- Per-vehicle tariffs with length tiers. A daily price that depends on how many days are rented, for example 1–2, 3–6 and 7 or more. Tariff templates apply the tiers to many vehicles as a coefficient on the base price: your length-of-rent discount.
- Season rules. Dates, an adjustment percentage (positive or negative), active weekdays, a priority for overlaps and optional vehicle groups. Add ready-made loads a typical year: high season July–August +25%, shoulder June and September +10%, Easter from Maundy Thursday to Easter Monday +20%, Christmas from 20 December to 6 January +30%, low season November to March −10%, and weekends (Fri–Sun) +10%. Easter and Christmas replace the season they fall in, and every rule stays editable.
- Day-by-day pricing. Each day of a booking is priced by the season of its date in the pickup location's time zone, so a rental crossing from June into July comes out right without any manual work.
- Fees, extras and promo codes. Fee rules with conditions, such as One-way rental, applied when the return location differs; extras priced per day, per rental or one-time; promo codes.
What it does not do: it does not change prices by itself based on occupancy and has no automatic last-minute discount; you set the rules. The minimum rental length is a single value for the whole account (Settings, Minimum Rental Units), not per season or per vehicle. For a peak-only minimum today, make the one-to-two-day tier more expensive or review short bookings for those dates by hand.
How often to revise prices, and what to watch
You build the calendar once a year. While a season is on sale, check three signals every week:
- Booking lead time. If your peak is full by April, you are cheap for the peak. If a holiday weekend is two weeks away and half the fleet is free, you are expensive or invisible.
- Utilisation by category and by vehicle. One category at 95% and another at 40% in the same week call for different prices, not one shared change.
- Average price per rented day. If ADR falls while utilisation rises, discounts (length tiers, promo codes, negotiated prices) are eating the season. RevPAU puts both into one number.
Change a little at a time, 5 to 10 points, and note when you did it; otherwise you will not know which change did what. In Renviq the dashboard shows fleet and per-vehicle utilisation, ADR, RevPAV and average lead time.
Common mistakes
- Copying the broker's price. Their price reflects their commission and their volume, not your costs. Below your floor, every peak booking costs you money.
- No minimum length in the peak. One-day rentals in the busiest weeks multiply cleans and leave gaps between bookings that nobody fills.
- One summer price. June is not August, and Easter is not March.
- A weekly tier that loses money in the peak. In the example, a seven-day tier at 0.85 of base puts August at €45 × 0.85 × 1.25 ≈ €47.81 a day: above the floor, fine. A tier that takes you below it while the fleet fills anyway has to go.
- Forgetting cleaning and commission. They are the two costs that turn a short rental "at a good price" into a loss.
- Prices that live in one person's head. If every staff member negotiates over chat, the average price falls without anyone deciding it; it is one of the reasons to move off the spreadsheet.