On an island where the rental businesses are small and local, the car comes to you. Most listings offer delivery to a hotel, villa or address, the handover happens in a lobby or a driveway, and nobody spends the first morning of the holiday finding an office. This is how it works, what the fee on the listing means, and how to get the timing right.
Pick-up at base, delivery to your door, or airport: the three hand-over legs
Every car can be collected from the rental business's own base. That is always available and never costs anything. Two optional legs sit on top of it, each a decision the business makes per car:
- Delivery to your address — the business brings the car to your hotel, villa or apartment anywhere inside its own delivery radius, for a flat amount shown on the car page. On some listings that amount is zero.
- Airport handover — someone meets you in the arrivals hall at SSR with the keys, for a separate flat amount, from Rs 500. The airport guide covers that leg on its own.
You pick one of the three when you book, and the mode, the address and the amount are written into the booking there and then. The fee is flat, not per day, and it does not move afterwards.
What "free delivery" means and the delivery radius on a listing
A FREE DELIVERY badge means the business has set its delivery amount to zero. It has not removed the radius: free delivery is free inside the area that business serves, and the radius is on the car page next to the fee.
The radius is measured from the business's base, and it follows the geography. A business in Grand Baie that delivers within fifteen kilometres covers the north and not much else; one in the west covers Flic en Flac and Tamarin and stops before the south. If your villa is outside the radius, delivery is not on offer for that car — the page says so as soon as you drop the pin on your address — and the answer is a business nearer to where you are staying. The Grand Baie, Flic en Flac and Trou aux Biches pages list the cars based around each area, which is the quickest way to find one whose radius includes yours.
Where delivery is not free, the amount is a single flat figure for the leg, shown before you book and included in your total.
Handover at a hotel or villa, step by step
- Book a car whose page offers delivery, enter the address and drop a pin on the map, and pick the handover time. Once the booking is confirmed, use the chat on your trip page for the gate code or the name the room is under.
- The business drives the car to the address at the agreed time and finds you — the lobby or car park at a hotel, the driveway at a villa.
- You show the originals of the documents on the booking: driving licence, passport or identity document, and the card the booking was paid with.
- Together you walk round the car. This is the photo check-in: the business photographs it from several angles, records the fuel level and the odometer, and anything already marked goes into the record. The cover guide explains why five minutes here matters.
- You sign the rental agreement, settle the balance due at pick-up with the business, and keep the keys.
The person delivering the car then leaves in a second car that followed. That is why the radius exists: a delivery to the far end of the island is a two-person, two-hour job for a small business.
Returning the car: same place or a different one
The return leg is its own choice on the car page, under "Bringing it back", fixed at booking like the delivery leg. A business offers whichever of four options it wants:
- Same as pick-up — the business collects the car from the address it delivered to, at the time on the booking.
- Back to the base — you drive it to the business yourself. Always available, always free.
- Collection from a different address — a hotel on another coast, say. The address must sit inside the business's radius, and the collection amount, where there is one, is a flat figure shown on the car page.
- Leave it at the airport — for the day you fly, on cars whose business offers the airport leg, for its airport amount.
Whichever you choose, the return is the handover in reverse: the photo check-out, the fuel level, the odometer, and the rental ends there. Be there for the walk-round, and plan the fuel — cars are normally handed over full and expected back full, with the policy for each car on its page, and a villa driveway has no fuel station next to it.
Timing: arrival day vs day two
The single most useful trick with delivery is to book the car from the second morning rather than the first afternoon. Almost everyone lands off a long flight and is collected by the hotel or a transfer anyway. A car that arrives at the villa at nine the next morning costs one day less than a car booked from the day of arrival, and skips the drive from the airport tired and on the wrong side of the road. On a five-day stay the saved day is a real fraction of the bill.
The exception is anyone whose plan on day one needs wheels. For them the airport handover is the better leg, and the family guide weighs the two for a party with children.
Whichever day you choose, give the business a handover time it can actually make. Mid-morning is easy; the hour a long-haul flight lands is not, and a business will say in the chat whether it delivers at that hour.
Delivery to the far coasts (east, south) — when a fee is fair
The east and the south are the quietest coasts and the thinnest on rental businesses. Most of the fleet sits in the north and west, so a car delivered to Belle Mare or Bel Ombre is travelling further than one delivered to Grand Baie, and a delivery fee on those legs pays for a morning's work by two people. Weigh it against the taxi you would otherwise take to the base and back, and it usually looks fair.
The way to avoid it is a business already on that coast. The east page lists the ones based there, some with free delivery inside their own radius, and the south-east page covers Mahebourg and Blue Bay, where delivery to a local villa is a short hop.
What to have ready at the door
The handover is quick when four things are ready:
- The original documents — licence, passport or identity document, and the payment card. Photographs on a phone are not documents. The licence guide has the detail.
- The balance due at pick-up — the amount on your booking, settled with the business by the methods on the car page.
- Ten minutes — for the walk-round and the agreement.
- The trip chat open — if the business is at the wrong gate or needs a room number, that thread is attached to the booking and reaches the person actually driving towards you.
If you have not booked yet, search the catalogue from where you are staying: a card marked DELIVERED TO YOU is a car whose business covers that address, and the FREE DELIVERY badge means exactly what it says inside that radius.