Heather Rusden rushed to book a hire car that would allow her to travel to Tasmania to see family members she'd been apart from since the pandemic began.Now there is a shortage of cars available and prices have significantly increasedHeather hasn't been able to get a hire car or a ticket on the Spirit of Tasmania.
While this doesn't put her off from making the trip from Melbourne, it leaves her reliant on borrowing other peoples' cars. Platypus Park Country Retreat owner Gina Scott said recently people had been booking the retreat, then cancelling, leaving her wondering "what's going on, that's not normal". "There is no quick fix unfortunately, so what we're just going to do is try and encourage people to look at other ways to get around the state," he said.
The vice president of one of the hire companies — Hertz Asia Pacific — said the Tasmania branch was operating with a much smaller number of vehicles, but that the prices were on par with previous years. The Royal Automobile Club of Tasmania said there had been "some suggestion" of people hiring out their private vehicles to help fill the void in the market."Typically an insurance policy for private use doesn't allow hiring or letting out of the car unless you talk to your insurer about it," he said.