Paperwork is the one part of renting a car that can stop the trip at the kerb. It is also the easiest part to get right, because there are only three documents involved and you can have all of them ready before you leave home.
Your home licence in Mauritius
Visitors normally drive here on the licence they already hold. Rental companies in Mauritius generally accept a full national driving licence from a visitor's own country, provided it is current, undamaged and covers the class of car being rented.
Two things make a licence awkward rather than invalid. A provisional or learner licence is not usable. And a licence that has expired, even by days, is simply not a licence — check the date on the card rather than the one you remember.
How long a visitor may keep driving on a foreign licence is a question for the Mauritian authorities, not for a rental listing, and it is worth asking your own consulate if you are staying for months rather than weeks. For an ordinary holiday it is not something people run into.
When an International Driving Permit is worth carrying
An International Driving Permit is not a licence. It is a standard-format translation of the one you already hold, issued in your own country before you travel, and it only works when presented together with the original.
Here, the rule the rental terms use is simple: if your licence was not issued in English or French, an International Driving Permit is presented with it. A card printed in English or French is normally enough on its own. A German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese or Japanese licence needs the IDP next to it — it costs little at home, takes minutes to obtain, and removes any argument at the handover or at a roadside check.
Carrying one when you did not strictly need it has never made a handover harder. Not having one when the person holding the keys expects it is a bad way to start a holiday.
How long you must have held the licence
This is set per car, not per island. Each car page states the minimum driver age and the minimum period for which the driving licence must have been held, and both are conditions of that particular listing.
Read those two lines before you book. They are the single most common reason a booking fails at the kerb, they differ between businesses, and they often differ between two cars from the same business — a small hatchback and a large or powerful car rarely ask the same thing. Catalogue filters let you narrow the fleet to the cars a given driver can actually rent, which is quicker than checking listings one at a time; the age rules guide covers those thresholds for younger and older drivers.
The requirement is measured at the date of pick-up, so a licence that reaches the threshold during the holiday does not count.
Passport, identity and the card
Alongside the licence, expect to show two more things at the handover.
The first is your passport or identity document. The rental company puts its details on the rental agreement, so it is not a formality that can be skipped, and it is the same document you uploaded to the booking.
The second is the payment card. The prepayment is paid online from a card in the name of the person placing the booking, and a card in somebody else's name may be declined. If the booking was made by one person and driven by another, sort that out before travelling rather than at arrivals.
Uploading documents before you travel
Documents go up once. Your driving licence and your identity document are uploaded to your Dodo Rent account and reused for every rental, and only the company you book with can see them, from the moment your booking is confirmed.
Do this at home, on a proper connection, with the documents in front of you. Photograph the whole card, flat, in daylight, all four corners inside the frame and no glare across the surname. A licence photographed at an angle in a dim hotel room is the version that gets sent back.
Uploading is not a substitute for carrying the originals. The business checks the physical documents at the handover, against what is on the booking.
The named driver rule
The person named on the booking must be the driver, must meet the car's requirements on the date of pick-up, and must present the original documents that were uploaded. If those things do not line up, the rental company may decline to hand the car over — and at that point the booking is treated as cancelled by you.
This is worth reading twice if you are booking for somebody else. Book in the name of the person who will drive, not the person paying, and use their licence details from the start.
Adding a second driver
Sharing the driving is normal on a two-week trip, and it is handled properly rather than informally: only drivers written into the rental agreement may drive.
Many listings offer a second driver as a bookable extra, priced per day or as a flat amount, and it appears in your total before you pay. The second driver brings the same documents as the first, meets the same age and licence conditions, and is added to the agreement at the handover.
Do not simply swap at a beach car park because it is a short hop. An unlisted driver is outside the agreement, and if anything happens while they are at the wheel, the insurance position is not the one you booked.
Before you book
Everything above lives on the car page, in two lines you can read in ten seconds. Check the minimum age and the licence period, make sure your documents are uploaded and current, and bring the originals.
If you are landing at SSR and being met at arrivals, the airport guide sets out how the document check works there. The airport page lists the cars offering meet and greet, and if you are heading straight into the capital, the Port Louis page is the local starting point. For two people with luggage, a sedan is the comfortable default.