Rent a car in Cyprus - everything you need to know

Renting a car in Cyprus is the most profitable way to travel around the country, and it will be equally convenient for those who travel independently in different parts of the country, and even for those who Rest in one resort on a package tour. In the off-season, Car Rental here is even cheaper than renting a bicycle or moped. About all questions, how and where to rent a car, how to make it more profitable, about the features of traffic, how and where to park, etc.:

What is very important to know

If you do not master all the further instructions for renting a car in Cyprus, then these are the important points you need to know:

• Traffic in Cyprus is left-hand (we have right-hand).
• Russian rights apply in Cyprus.
• You can not drive a rented car to Northern Cyprus. In practice, they pass through the checkpoint, but the insurance will not work, and you need to issue a new one at the border for 15 euros per day.
• Insurance is not valid on dirt roads.
• For collateral you need to have a credit card, debit may not be accepted.
• Rent the cheapest online, pick up a car at the airport.
• Upon receipt and delivery, carefully check and mark all damage, including in the cabin. You can conduct video or photography.

How much does it cost to rent a car in Cyprus

Renting a car in Cyprus is very affordable, and those who are traveling around the country for the first time seem fantastic. The lowest prices can be obtained at Larnaca airport, a little more expensive at Paphos airport, even more expensive at resorts.

Here are the minimum prices for the benchmark as of 2021.

• In high season (may-October) - 68 euros for 7 days (79.09 USD), or 9.7 euros / day (812 USD).
• Low season (November-April) - 26 euros for 7 days (30.24 USD), or 3.7 euros / day (310 USD).

These are the minimum real prices for a car without air conditioning and with a manual transmission, which can be found online. Of course, with an increase in the class of cars, prices are higher. If the rental period is less, then the price for one day will also be less profitable, so it is most profitable to rent immediately for the entire period of your vacation. And, of course, much more expensive is a short-term rental on the spot in resorts, usually below 30 euros per day can not be found even in low season.

Where to rent a car in Cyprus

Car rental is available at all and airports. Walking through the tourist areas of the resorts, you will constantly see rental offices and rows of parked cars with red numbers next to the rental offices. You can directly go to any such rental office and register on the spot.

But today it is much more profitable and convenient to search and book online. You can do this directly on the websites of rental offices, or you can use aggregators that compare prices from many distributors at once. There is no difference by and large, just in the latter case there are more chances to find a profitable option. We recommend data aggregators:

What rights are needed in Cyprus

You can drive a car in Cyprus on National Russian Rights, an international driver's license is not required (IDP). To make it clear, here's a bit more detail:

• Contemporary Driving License issued to all drivers in the Russian Federation. They fully comply with the 1968 Vienna Convention on road traffic, and are recognized in Cyprus as perfectly legal.

  

• International Driving Permit (IDP) issued in the Russian Federation at the request of the driver in addition to Driving License. To obtain them, you do not need to re-pass the exams, you can simply contact the MFC, traffic police or the website of Public Services to obtain them. The cost is 1600 rubles, when ordering through the website of Public Services-1120 rubles.

  The presence of an IDP is not mandatory for driving a car in Cyprus, but we have met reviews that some dubious rental offices used the absence of an IDP as an excuse to refuse to issue a car and leave an advance payment for booking to themselves, or to impose additional insurance.

  

You can read more all about driving licenses abroad here.

What kind of bank card is needed for rent and collateral

To get a car, you will have to leave a deposit and pay the rental price. The deposit, depending on the class of car, starts from 600 euros, and is usually equal to the deductible (see below about insurance, what it is). Deposits and payment are accepted strictly by plastic cards, cash is not accepted. At the same time, you can pay the rent with absolutely any card, but for the deposit there are certain requirements for it.

Almost everywhere on the sites in the terms of rent it is written that only credit cards are accepted as collateral. It blocks the amount of collateral, which is released when the car is returned, sometimes immediately, sometimes within a few days, less often weeks. Money is not written off, namely blocked. ie if it is credit funds, interest on them will not be charged. If your card does not meet certain requirements, which are described below, then you may be refused a car. Sometimes renters use this scheme to refuse to rent and keep the prepayment of the reservation for themselves, or to impose additional insurance on you to reset the deposit.

In the representation of local rental offices, a credit card for collateral must have:

• The label is Credit Card, not Debit Card or Rassrochka.
• It should indicate the name of the owner by extrusion, which is called "embossing". Cards without a name or with a name made by simple spraying or burning may not be accepted.
• The card must have a sufficient limit or own funds to freeze the deposit.

To avoid failures, ideally you need to have just such a card: personal, embossed, with the inscription Credit Card. In practice, they may inadvertently accept debit cards with the owner's name and embossment, but this is more like luck. At the very least one should check such a map on one of these sites https://binlists.com/, https://www.bindb.com/bin-database.html, and if it is marked there as credit, then you can try, otherwise it is not worth it.

What you need to know about insurance

Each car is insured with a minimum insurance package with a deductible. At the same time, it does not cover damage to Windows, wheels, mirrors, does not work on dirt roads and in the northern occupied part of Cyprus, in a state of intoxication. And the deductible is the amount less than which all damages will be paid by you. i.e. for example, if the deductible is 600 euros, and you damaged the car for 599 Euros, then you will pay for the repair, not the insurance.

But there's a way to get rid of the franchise entirely. There are two ways:

• Issue full insurance upon receipt of the car. Its cost starts from 15 euros per day, it will be possible to find out only upon receipt.
• Get insurance on the website of aggregators when booking, which is Cheaper. They offer a special form of insurance against paying a deductible, but you will need to pay that deductible first (in case repairs are needed) and then the insurance will refund it to you.

You can also add options for driving and damage caused to third parties when applying for travel insurance. i.e. if you commit an accident and are guilty, the insurance will cover the damage to the injured party.

You can pick up travel insurance on these sites:

• ☂ Travel insurance on VisitorsCoverage
• ☂ Travel insurance on Insubuy

How and what to refuel, the cost of gasoline

There are many gas stations in Cyprus, but they are mostly located outside the cities. There are no gas stations along high-speed highways between major cities, you need to go to parallel roads through special exits. What is inconvenient, such gas stations from highways are not visible, and the signs to them are not always clearly installed, so it is better to use the navigator to search for them.

• The price of 1 liter in the Republic of Cyprus - from 1.18 euros (1.37 USD).
• The price of 1 liter in Northern Cyprus - from 5.8 lira (0.13 USD).

By Russian standards, gasoline is very expensive, from 1.18 euros per liter. On the West Coast, the area of Paphos and Polis is even more expensive, from 1.22 euros (price at the beginning of 2021). In Northern Cyprus, gasoline is much cheaper, but there payment for it is made already Turkish lira, 1 liter from 5.8 lira.

When you receive the car, specify what fuel to fill. Remember that most cars are fueled with unleaded 95 Unleaded fuel, which is pronounced "unleaded".

Features of traffic in Cyprus

Traffic in Cyprus is left-hand (we have right-hand). It will take some time to rebuild, but to make it easier, it is recommended to rent a car with an automatic transmission. If you take the "handle", then you will need to change gears with your left hand, which is very difficult from unaccustomed. The brake, clutch and gas pedals are arranged in the same sequence as ours.

The roads in Cyprus are not bad, there are high-speed highways that connect major cities, but they are all free. There are no toll roads here at all. The traffic is generally calm, there is not much Transport. We met traffic jams only in Limassol and Nicosia.

There are very few cameras fixing violations, and they are all marked with appropriate signs, so that "get on camera" chances are minimal. Sometimes the traffic police arrange a "photo hunt" on the roads, but, as in our homeland, oncoming drivers warn by blinking their headlights about an "ambush".

As for the driving style of local drivers, it can not be said that they are all disciplined, rather the opposite. Rarely anyone goes without exceeding the speed limit, calmly cross solid and double solid, put cars in forbidding places. But we would not advise following the examples of local drivers, since fines for traffic violations are very large, amounting to hundreds of euros. And if you think that after handing over a rental car you fine "will not catch up", then in vain. There were cases when, weeks after returning home, tourists wrote off money from a collateral bank card in the form of fines.

Where to park your car

In the major cities of Limassol, Paphos,Larnaca and Nicosia there is not enough parking space, there are paid hourly parking. But when you get a little comfortable, you will understand that there are no big problems finding a free place for long or short-term parking.

Free parking is available near temples, near shopping centers and shops, government agencies, near attractions. It is also usually not a problem to find a parking space, it is only necessary to move off the main road into the alleys or courtyards. Most hotels and guest houses offer their own parking spaces, or hold places in free parking lots within walking distance. In rare cases, or if you are worried about a car, you can find night parking for 2-3 euros.

If you need to stop at a paid parking lot equipped with parking meters, then the scheme of their use is as follows: put the car in place; in the parking meter pay for the planned time (the first hour is 1 euro, each subsequent one is 0.5 euros); place the sticker received from the parking meter in a prominent place on the windshield. In theory, then the employees go around the site and check the availability of paid receipts, and where they are not – write out a fine. In practice, as the locals say, this happens very rarely, and they themselves rarely make the payment. But we do not recommend doing so.

How to save on rent and avoid unforeseen expenses

To rent a car in Cyprus turned out to be profitable for you, you need not only to find the cheapest rental, but also not to make mistakes, because of which you can get into additional expenses that will block all your benefits.

• Rent a car is most profitable online with receipt and delivery at one of the airports. So you will save not only on the rental price, but also on the road from the airport to the hotel.
• If you decide to get a car in one place, and hand over in another, you will have to pay from 30 euros.
• Rent for a long time is more profitable. For example, 1 day of rent can cost 10 euros, and a week is only 30 euros (these are the prices of the low season of 2021).
• Do not rent a navigator without an urgent need, it is perfectly replaced by a smartphone with offline maps downloaded to it. You can also download there our important points and attractions from the map of Cyprus, and drive around them.
• When renting, give preference to distributors, issue and accept cars with a full tank.
• Upon receipt and delivery of the car together with the employee of the rental office, check all damages (including pay attention to the condition of the interior), enter them in a special paper form. Do not hesitate to take pictures or record video, in normal rental offices it is not forbidden. And don't take anyone's word for it.
• Do not break the rules by imitating local drivers. They already know all the places where the cameras are installed (although there are not many of them), and they solve problems with the police in their own way, the island is small, and everyone knows each other. If you violate, the fine can "catch up" with you when you are already at home, by debiting money from the collateral card. And the fine here is huge.
• Do not be late for the time of receipt of the car booked in advance. In some companies, one hour is allocated for receipt, and if you do not arrive by this time, the reservation will be canceled, and the prepayment will not be refunded to you. It is better to allocate an hour and a half from the time of arrival to the moment of receiving the car at the airport for passport control and Customs.
• Carefully read the instructions about the place of receipt of the machine. Some rental offices do not have offices at the airport, and their representatives meet customers in the arrivals hall or even on the street.
• Carefully read the terms of the lease, so as not to fall on the conditions under which the rental company may refuse to issue you a car, or oblige you to issue expensive insurance. This could be a mandatory IDP requirement, an unsuitable credit card, hidden fees or government taxes, payment processing fees, etc.