My Recommendation for Car Rental on Mallorca
What’s so special about hiring a car? I mean, car rental is just car rental, isn’t it?
Actually, no, because it can radically influence the seamless enjoyment of your holiday.
Which is why I recommend Robert and Faustina.
Robert (English) or Faustina (Spanish) meet you off your flight. (At no extra cost.) They wait for you with a sign. You’re on your way to your hotel inside ten minutes.
They embody the waning notion of “service” in every way. Last year one of our guests at Scott’s Townhouse lost his car keys. Every other car hire service we’ve used – nine of them over the last dozen years – would have simply told him to take a taxi back and come into their offices the next day to get new keys.
Not Robert. He got up from his meal at 9:30 p.m., drove all the way across the island to deliver replacement keys. No charge, of course.
Returning your car? Couldn’t be simpler: drive to the airport, park the car, put the keys in the luggage compartment and walk away to catch your flight.
Are they expensive? No – middle of the range, nowhere near the most expensive, and not much above the cheapest.
But if you want cheap, be advised, even warned. Get off your flight and wait behind a dozen other people for half an hour to get to the airport car rental counter. Or wait for a shuttle bus for twenty minutes and then wait at the counter in the car hire shack behind five other people for another twenty minutes. Put up with brusque-unto-almost-rude treatment at the hands of busy, overworked and underpaid employees who don't speak your language terribly well. Is that how you really want to start your holiday, just to save a few pennies?
Why am I going on and on about this? Simply because we’ve heard all the stories over and over over the years and Robert and Faustina are the best car people we’ve ever found, bar none.
If you'd like to get a quote, possibly book with them, drop us a line at and give us your flight information and dates. It's as easy as that.
Some other tips and opinions.
- Get a small car unless you really need a bigger one. Parking is difficult enough on Mallorca without having to search for spaces you can fit a Volvo estate into (something I did for the first five years we were out here and do not recommend).
- Probably you shouldn't bother getting a convertible. Yes, they're available, but at twice the cost of normal rental cars and the island is so small you probably wouldn't use the amenity all that much. Also, if you can drive a stick shift, it will cost you considerably less than an automatic. Go figure.
- Hire cars – and this comment applies to both hire cars on Mallorca or any other tourist destination – are magnets for thieves. Be warned regarding leaving anything of value in your car, even in the luggage compartment. Rob and Faustina don’t put an advertising badge on their cars, informing all the lowlife scum you’re a tourist.
- Drive as though the locals were all demented boy racers. Many are.
- If you hire from Rob and Faustina, don’t worry if you get a tiny scrape or a ding in the door. Other Mallorca car rental companies will probably charge you, but Rob and Faustina won’t. Getting bashed or scraped is just an everyday hazard of living in a place where the parking places were all designed for Fiat 500’s and most of the drivers seem to need new glasses.
- If you want an exotic car, muscle car or jeep and no expense spared, then it’s best to look to one of the German companies. Google “Mietwagen Mallorca” or “Mallorca Mietwagen” or “Autovermietung auf Mallorca”. They all speak English.
- Booking your car rental when you book your Mallorca flight is generally NOT the best way to get a good deal. It can be swings and roundabouts with the pricing, so that what you save on the flight you may pay for extra on the car hire. Keep the transactions separate, even though they make it enticingly easy for you to do it all with just a few more mouse clicks.
- When booking with a major car hire company, if you’re booking online always book the basic option, the smallest car. You’ll often find that once you’re at the counter you can get an upgrade to a larger car for little or even nothing.
That’s about all I can think of that might be useful to you. Do I sound biased regarding Robert & Faustina? I am, but that’s bias based on a dozen years experience with other companies.
But no doubt you have information, recommendations, or gripes that could be useful for other people. If you’d like to contribute your knowledge, please fill in the form below and send it to us. Thank you.
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