An overview, three major features and notes of “Tabirai Car Rental”

Related articles: Complete guide of Tabirai Car Rental

“Tabirai Car Rental” is a car rental comparing and booking website that enables you to “fast search, compare, and reserve” various plans providing by major car rental companies in Japan. Comparing with famous competing companies such as “Rakuten Travel (Rakuten、楽天トラベル)” and “Jalan（じゃらん）”, Tabirai is a simple reservation system offering the best price.

For this reason, Japanese users also recognize Tabirai as a “standard” of car rental comparing and booking website. Tabirai has been run as a car reservation system for Japanese for over 10 years ago.

Three major features of Tabirai Car Rental

1. Really low price, and even at half price!

“Maximum 60% OFF” or “Maximum 50% OFF” are often shown on the Tabirai website. It’s a discount rate that compares with the fixed price of car rental companies. Obviously, the price shown are almost the best price compared with the fixed price of car rental companies. Please note that the price posted on the website is the discounted rate.

Why does Tabirai able to offer the best price? Car rental in Japan can be divided into peak periods and off-peak periods during a year. In order to attract more customers, most of the car rental companies will lower the price during off-peak periods.

2. Simple and easy to understand price system

The price shown on Tabirai Car Rental has already included Collision Damage Waiver(CDW), rental fee of car navigation and on-board equipment for ETC, and consumption tax. The additional expenses you have to pay at the car rental outlet are gasoline, highway tolls and Non-Operation Charge (NOC)  insurance(extra insurance for NOC, optional, subscribers only).

3. Rent a car all over Japan with the same reservation method

You can reserve car rental all over Japan with the same reservation method. For example, you can reserve a rental car at Haneda International Airport in the same way that you did in Fukuoka, Kyushu.

This feature is the same as competing websites such as “Rakuten Travel” and “Jalan”. However, there is one difference. Tabirai has an extensive feature page specialized in airports and stations called “area page“. For example, when you plan to rent a car at “Sapporo Station” in “Hokkaido”, search it as follows:

Top page of “Tabirai” → Page of “Hokkaido Car Rental” → Page of “Sapporo Station”

The advantage of the specialized page “Sapporo Station” is that you can search the location of car rental outlets on the map. Memo the car rental outlets where you planned to go, and search for the best price near Sapporo Station on the same page. This function is very convenient for those who have planned to rent a car from airport or station.

Notes – This is useful to know before you rent a car –

1. “One-way car rentals” service only available within the same area (as of July 2017)

You can specify where to pick up a car and where to drop off it during reservation. For example, optional service that pick up a rental car at Fukuoka Airport in Kyushu and return it to a car rental outlet near Kagoshima Airport are provided (additional charge is required). Please note that this optional service is only available within the same area on Tabirai Car Rental.

The delimitation of regions are as follows.
北海道地域：北海道
東北地域：青森、岩手、宮城、秋田、山形、福島
甲信越地域：新潟、長野、山梨
北陸地域：富山、石川（金沢）、福井
関東地域：東京（羽田空港）、千葉（成田空港）、埼玉、群馬、栃木、茨城
東海地域：愛知（名古屋）、岐阜、三重、静岡
関西地域：大阪、京都、兵庫（神戸）、奈良、滋賀、和歌山
中国地域：鳥取、島根、広島、山口
四国地域：徳島、香川、愛媛、高知
九州地域：福岡、熊本、鹿児島、長崎、佐賀、大分、宮崎
沖縄地域：沖縄

2. The lineup of car rentals and charges are different for each area

Tabirai launched its services across the country in 2015. For this reason, the lineup of car rentals (car type etc) and charges vary from region to region. Car rentals are strong in regions like Okinawa, Hokkaido and Kyushu (Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Kagoshima, Nagasaki, Saga, Oita, Miyazaki).

For the price of car rental, Okinawa is the cheapest region among the country. Hokkaido and Kyushu are also reasonable compared to other areas.

3. Two pricing system, by “Day” or “Hour”

There are two types of pricing system on Tabirai, charging by “day” or “hour“. Pricing system are set automatically on the website to show the best price to users.

· Charging by day → Rental fee is determined by the number of days used.
* The rental fee is determined by the number of days. Even if you change the pick up and drop off times, the price remains the same.

· Charging by hour → Rental fee is determined by the number of hours used.
* The rental fee is determined by the number of hours you used the rental car. If you change the pick up and drop off times, the price will change accordingly.

The price may be different when you change your search criteria (pickup and drop off times). It’s related to Tabirai pricing system, charging by day or hour.