Car Hire in Maspalomas: Collect in the Resort, Not the Airport

Collect the car the morning you need it, from a pickup point in the resort, not thirty kilometres away.

Pickup points in the resort

58 of 85 cars take a debit card

49 accept a driver under 25

Up to 50% cheaper than portals

A resort week, in the order the car matters

Maspalomas sits 30 km south-west of the airport at Gando, and the case for collecting here rather than there is arithmetic. A car parked outside a hotel for three days is three days of rental, and at the median rate on the Gran Canaria listing (25-39 EUR a day) that is the mountain day you wanted it for.

Arrive without a car

Take the transfer or the bus down the GC-1. Collecting on arrival is a different trip with its own page, the airport car hire guide; this one assumes you did not.

Walk the first days

The dunes begin where the resort stops, the lighthouse stands beyond their western end, and the Faro promenade runs between the two. None of it needs a car.

Collect on the morning you need it

Nothing on the listing is delivered to a hotel door (0 of 85 cars offer delivery), so the handover is at the supplier's point in the resort: a short walk or a taxi, then the licence, the card you booked with and a slow walk round the car.

Climb the GC-60

The road north leaves from the top of the resort and climbs through Fataga to Tejeda, with Roque Nublo at 1,813 m the reason most people go. Steep, winding, slow, and the best day the island offers from a resort bed.

Hand it back where it suits you

Return it to the same point in the resort, or ask the supplier whether it will take it back at the airport on your departure morning. Either way you paid for the days you drove.

Collect here or collect at the airport: it depends on the week

There is no single right answer, only one for the shape of your stay, and three shapes cover almost everyone who books through Rent Gran Canaria for Maspalomas. If you are next door in Playa del Ingles, west of the dunes in Meloneras or round the coast in Puerto Rico, that resort has its own page.

Collect in the resort, two days, hand it back

Book the pickup for the morning of the mountain day and return it the following evening. Two days at the median rate buys the GC-60, Tejeda and a swim at Puerto de Mogan on the way home along the GC-500; the other five days cost nothing.

Collect on arrival and keep it the whole stay

If Las Palmas, the summit and the south-west coast each get their own day, a car from the first morning is the right call, and the airport page explains that pickup. Ask the hotel first whether it has a car park; a resort hotel without one is what makes people regret a whole-stay hire.

Two short hires beat one long one

Past a fortnight, fourteen days of rental used on four is rarely the cheap way round. Two short hires, spaced across the stay, usually cost less and let you book the second once you can see the weather; the north sits under cloud more often than the south.

Settle these before the key changes hands

The card

58 of the 85 cars on the Gran Canaria listing take a debit card. Filter for it before you look at prices; the rule belongs to the supplier and the counter cannot change it.

The gearbox

57 manual, 28 automatic. The GC-60 is a low-gear road with hairpins above Fataga, fine in a manual you drive at home and tiring in one you have not touched since the test.

The fuel and the rules

The Canaries sit outside EU VAT territory and charge IGIC instead, so a tank costs noticeably less than in mainland Spain. Drive on the right: 120 on the GC-1, 90 on the open road, 50 in the resort, and an alcohol limit of 0.05%.

The GC-60, from the top of the resort to the roof of the island

Every resort on the south coast has a road into the mountains; Maspalomas has the one people mean when they say the mountain road. The GC-60 leaves from the top of the resort and climbs through Fataga towards Tejeda, and within twenty minutes the coast is out of sight and the road has settled into the shape it keeps for the next hour: steep, winding and slow.

Tejeda is the village at the centre of it, Roque Nublo stands at 1,813 m a walk from the road, and Pico de las Nieves at 1,949 m is the summit of Gran Canaria, reachable by road. From the top on a clear day the south is sun and the north is the panza de burro, the cloud bank that sits over Las Palmas, and you see why the resorts are where they are. Come down the GC-15 into Las Palmas and the GC-1 back along the east coast and you have crossed the island in a day.

A compact copes with all of it, and 31 of the 85 cars are compacts. What matters more is the gearbox and the driver, so if you are unsure, book one of the 28 automatics and leave early. The interior road by road is on the Tejeda and mountain roads guide.

Questions from people staying in Maspalomas

For a beach-first week, wait. A car that arrives with you sits in a resort car park at the full daily rate until the day you drive it. Collect in the resort on the morning of the mountain day and pay for two or three days instead of seven.

No. None of the 85 cars on the island listing offers delivery to an address, so the handover happens at the supplier pickup point in the resort, normally a short walk or a taxi from the hotel. The supplier confirms the point and the time when you book.

No. The dunes begin at the edge of the resort, the lighthouse stands beyond their western end and the Faro promenade joins the two, all on foot. The car is for the interior, the south-west coast on the GC-500 and Las Palmas in the north.

Yes, driven slowly. The road is steep, winding and slow the whole way from Fataga to Tejeda, but a compact handles it. The harder question is the gearbox: 57 of the 85 cars are manual and only 28 automatic, so if you would rather not work a clutch on hairpins, book an automatic early.

In the hotel car park, if the hotel has one, which is the first thing to ask before you book the car. Larger hotels tend to have their own space and smaller complexes often do not. If the answer is no, that alone is a reason to hire for the days you drive.