It seems we have been here before and back then the ‘excuse’ was Covid. Roll on a couple of years and the Costa del Sol faces another rental car shortage at Malaga Airport and across the region.
This is being blamed on a worldwide microchip supply shortage, which in turn, is affecting the production of new cars.
Because of the recent pandemic, and the fact that there were on an off travel restrictions in Spain, the car hire market in Malaga was down due to low numbers of visitors. However, as tourism us thriving once again on the Costa del Sol, the shortage of microchips is now having a direct effect on the number of rentals cars in the car hires firms fleets.
The current fleet for the Malaga province, many of which are Malaga Car Hire vehicles, is around 40,000. This is not enough for the huge demand these firms are now seeing for Easter and through the summer.
The data being analysed for cars rented during 2021 and 2022 shows a significant drop of 40% in new vehicles that were registered in 2022, when compared to 2021. The data also shows that the Malaga province is one of the most important provinces in Andalucia when it comes to car hire, taking some 70% of all bookings.
In 2022 there were a total of 3,527 vehicles that were registered across Andalucia and of these, 2,482 were in Malaga.
The issues arose during the pandemic when there were simple no tourists. Local residents were often subjected to travel restrictions either from one province to another, and in the worst cases, from one municipality to another.
Back then the car hire firms in Malaga had to make a decision to sell off large numbers of their fleets. They are now struggling to replace them now that tourism is hitting new highs.
What we would recommend is shopping around for car hire at Malaga Airport and around the region, because demand and lack of stock is sure to bump up the prices.