June 21, 2026. There are indications that, after surging upward a few weeks in a row, Maui car rental prices are now stabilizing at their seasonal summer peak levels that they will hold for the next few weeks. Prices for compact cars at Maui's Kahului Airport (OGG) are actually down slightly from last week. Mid-size cars, convertibles, and Jeeps changed by relatively small amounts. We are still seeing pressure on the large vehicle categories. Prices for standard SUV's have added on another 32% to last week's increase. Availability for large SUV's is restored, but at extreme elevated prices nearing $2,000/week (gulp). And mini-vans remain sold out. Last minute bookings are still carrying high premiums over advance bookings, but the good news is that this premium is showing signs of beginning to narrow, and it is likely that the advantage will revert to last-minute booking within a few weeks - but not yet. In a year-over-year comparison, this week's prices are still showing a huge increase over prices from one year ago - in the range of 66% (that's approaching double) to 137% (that's more than double) depending on the vehicle category. This continues the year-over-year increase trend that we've documented since the beginning of 2026. This week's analysis delves into the reasons driving this increase. This is not your "prices are high because of supply and demand" high-school junior analysis. We've done in depth research to uncover the hidden reasons for high prices on Maui rental cars, that you will not find anywhere else. Guaranteed or your money back. Keep reading for all the details.

Fig. 1. Prices for Maui car rental at Kahului Airport (OGG) from March 2025 to now.

HOW MUCH IS THE CHEAPEST MAUI RENTAL CAR ON JUNE 22, 2026?

Every week, we list the lowest available prices for a one-week car rental from Maui's Kahului Airport (OGG), for a selection of vehicle categories, with the company offering the best price. This is our overview of Maui car rental prices for the week beginning Monday, June 22, 2026.

Category Price Company

Economy $427 Thrifty

Midsize $700 Thrifty

Jeep $1,269 Budget

Convertbl $724 Payless

SUV $1,230 Payless

7 St SUV $1,844 Budget

Minivan SOLD OUT

Check Maui rental car prices for your trip.

The prices quoted here include all applicable taxes and fees. Prices for these vehicle types charted week-to-week for the last 14 months are illustrated in Figure 1.

These are the lowest prices in every car category: The lowest price for a compact car from Kahului Airport (OGG) this week is with Thrifty, at $427/week. Mid-size cars are starting at $700/week, also at Thrifty. Jeeps are starting at $1,269/week, from Budget. The lowest price for a convertible is $724/week, at Payless. The cheapest standard SUV's are $1,230/week, at Payless. Large (7-seat) SUV's start at $1,844/week, from Budget. And minivans are completely sold out island-wide with none available from any company serving the airport or any off-airport locations listed in the Online Travel Agent (OTA) systems. .

Fig. 2. Maui car rental prices at Kahului Airport (OGG) this week and last week, with the percentage change..

HOW MUCH DID MAUI RENTAL CAR PRICES CHANGE FROM LAST WEEK?

For each vehicle category, this is how the lowest price for a one week rental from Maui's Kahului Airport (OGG) starting on Monday June 22, 2026 has changed from the week before:

Category This week Last Change
Economy $427 $537 -20%

Midsize $700 $700 0%

Jeep $1,269 $1,255 +1%

Convertbl $724 $797 -9%

SUV $1,230 $930 32%

7 st SUV $1,844 -

Minivan - -

Check how much it costs to rent a car for your Maui trip.

While last week saw increases from the preview week across all available categories, this week's prices for rental cars from Kahului Airport (OGG) were mixed compared to last week. Economy/compact cars were down 20%, mid-size cars were unchanged, Jeeps were up 1%, and convertibles were down 9%. Prices for standard SUV's moved upward again this week, increasing 32%. For large SUV's and minivans, we are not able to make a week-to-week comparison.

We are seeing indications that prices overall are leveling off at their summer peak levels. We do not anticipate any significant increases going forward. Indeed, if seasonal travel patterns hold this hear, we expect prices to hold steady for a few weeks then decline to shoulder season levels by the end of July.

Prices for this week and last week, with the percentage change week-to-week, are illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 3. Price comparison for Maui Car Rental as of July 2026 shows prices significantly higher year-over-year.

HOW DO MAUI CAR RENTAL PRICES COMPARE TO ONE YEAR AGO?

This is how Maui car rental prices look in the fourth week of July 2026, beginning Monday July 22, compared to the corresponding week of last year, that began Monday July 23, 2025:

Vehicle Now Last Year Change

Economy $427 $258 +66%

Midsize $700 $295 +137%

Jeep $1,269 $657 +93%

Convertbl $724 $395 +83%

SUV $1,230 $601 +105%

7 st SUV $1,844 $1,010 +83%

Minivan - $1,339 -

These numbers are charted in Figure 3.

How much does it cost for a Maui rental car?

Prices this week compared to one year ago are significantly higher in every category for which a comparison is possible. Economy cars, up 66% year over year- not quite double. Mid-size cars, up 137%, more than double. Jeeps up 93%, convertibles up 83%, standard SUV's up 105%, large (7-seat SUV's) up 83% - all these categories cost about double what they did one year ago. No comparison possible for minivans, because this week they are sold out. Not coincidentally, in our view, the largest change is for the category with the most recent safety recall. Chevy Malibu vehicles were recalled in May, and hundreds of these vehicles, that constitute a significant portion of the Maui rental fleet, are sitting idle in the airport base yards, because of regulations that prohibit major rental companies from renting them or selling them.

WHY ARE MAUI CAR RENTAL PRICES SO HIGH AND WHY IS NOBODY SAYING - OR DOING - ANYTHING ABOUT IT?

These year-over-year price increases are simply mind-boggling. For any consumer good, a year-over-year change of this magnitude would be accompanied by wide-spread protests and possibly even - why not - a popular revolt. We are witnessing right now how a year-over-year increase of about 25% in the price of gasoline is likely to lead to a Congressional transition of power in the coming US mid-term elections. A doubling of the price of eggs in 2024 may have contributed to a transition of power in that year's US presidential election. In fact, if you look back at history, a price explosion like the one we are seeing on Maui is exactly how the French Revolution started. The price of bread nearly doubled, and Queen Marie-Antoinette lost her head. Yet, here in Maui, a 137% year-over-year price spike for mid-size cars and a literal doubling of standard SUV rates is passing nearly un-noticed. So how is it that the modern vacation equivalent of 1789 Paris is happening right at the OGG airport counter, with not so much as a whisper or protest?

To understand why visitors are quietly absorbing these revolutionary price hikes, we have to pull back the curtain on a series of structural shifts, island logistics traps, and raw algorithmic math, that together have fundamentally rewritten the rules of the Maui car rental market.

A. The Phantom Fleet And The Staggering, Cumulative Effect of Safety Recalls

The primary driver behind the Maui car rental supply shortage is a massive, multi-wave regulatory squeeze. Over the past twelve months, the Maui car rental ecosystem has suffered a series of devastating blows from manufacturer safety recalls. This was not a single isolated event. It was a relentless rolling tide:

July 2025: The Chrysler minivan safety recall hits, completely crippling the primary family transportation class.
November 2025: The Jeep Wrangler hybrid safety recall pulls a massive portion of Maui's iconic adventure fleet offline (p. 1).
March 2026: A major Ford SUV recall targets and freezes the crucial family crossover segment
April 2026: The Chevy Malibu recall lands, vaporizing a massive percentage of the island's standard sedan inventory.

Combined, these four safety recalls have legally idled thousands of high-demand vehicles. Because federal regulations strictly prohibit commercial agencies from renting or selling recalled units, these cars are transformed into dead inventory overnight - sitting completely frozen in airport baseyards

B. The Logistics Trap: Why Thousands of Idled Cars Are Stranded on Maui

Yes but, don't these recalls affect car rental companies everywhere? Why have prices not doubled everywhere? And, if the cars are broken, why don't they just fix them? The answer is in the rigid, hyper-constrained reality of island logistics. These highly technical recall repairs cannot be performed in-situ by local mechanics - the local dealerships simply do not have the capacity to do it. The affected vehicles must be physically shipped back across the Pacific to the mainland United States. However, ocean freight shipping schedules to and from Hawaii are completely inflexible. Cargo ship allocations are negotiated and booked years in advance. In a normal year, this shipping schedule is a beautifully choreographed dance: older models are systematically shipped off-island beginning after the end of the winter season, and the new models come parading in just in time for the fall, to be put into service before Christmas, the peak for the entire year. This constant rotation keeps fleet numbers balanced with demand, while not exceeding available vehicle storage space - which in itself is a precious commodity.

When a surprise safety recall strikes, it shatters this delicate choreography. Recalled vehicles cannot jump the line; they must be painstakingly worked into the existing, pre-booked mainland shipping schedule. As a result, we are seeing a sluggish, frustrating process where cars can only leave as sporadic cargo availability allows, in relatively small "tranches." The backlog is severe. Many Chrysler minivans recalled a full year ago are still sitting uselessly on island dirt. Hundreds of Jeeps recalled last November haven't budged. And for the Ford SUVs and Chevy Malibu cars recalled this spring, the off-island recall rotation has not even begun.

C. The Modern "Let Them Eat Cake" Substitution Effect

When you legally vaporize thousands of vehicles in a closed ecosystem, the shockwave instantly triggers a modern version of the Substitution Effect. In 1789 France, when basic wheat bread sold out, bakeries used their unregulated luxury flour to fill shelves with expensive, high-priced brioche cake instead. Travelers at OGG are experiencing the exact same thing. But these people are not 18th century peasants. When families who land hoping for a minivan or a full-size sedan find zero availability, they do not go looking for someone's head to lop off. They do not board the next plane back home;. Instead, they stay and take whatever options are available - usually large 7-seat SUVs, at a premium because of the sudden surge of demand. And when these run out, they pick the next best thing - whatever it might be in their mind. This sudden wave of displaced demand causes a massive cross-elasticity effect, triggering an artificial capacity crunch and sky-high price spikes in vehicle categories that were not even affected by a recall in the first place.

D. The Hotel Room Effect

Think of a rental car company as a large hotel. Not Hilbert's famous hotel, with infinite rooms on infinite floors, but a finite hotel with a rigid, un-expandable number of rooms. If a hotel manager is forced to board up 30% of the rooms indefinitely due to an emergency, their massive fixed overhead costs - airport concession fees, commercial leases, payroll, fleet insurance, committed marketing and advertising, et cetera - do not decrease by 30%. To survive on a smaller volume of total rentals, the managers shift their baseline pricing upward to cover those fixed costs across fewer available units. Let's say the manager had 100 rooms that they rented at $21 per room. That's $2,100 per night, total. To get the same money with just 70 rooms, they have to be rented for $30 per night - that's a near 50% increase in the nightly rate. And so it goes with Maui rental cars.

E. The Rise of the Machine-Learning Cartel

We do not use the word "cartel" lightly. There is a stench of anti-competitive behavior in how pricing systems operate. Add that to the near-triopoly of the rental car market. Three companies rule: Hertz/Dollar/Thrifty. Enterprise/Alamo/National. And Avis/Budget/Payless. All the others are small fry (sorry, SiXT). We do not claim that these companies cooperatively fix prices. But their independent and separate pricing systems do inadvertently and unintentionally maybe conspire to drive prices higher. The baseline inflation of recalls is supercharged by a fundamental change in the way prices are set, exacerbated by a significant change in the competitive landscape of rental cars in Maui. In early 2026, the local market witnessed the demise of Ace Rent-A-Car, who, for a few years from its start in 2017, was the undisputed off-airport price leader. With the primary discounter gone, the market lost its competitive anchor. Modern, autonomous machine-learning algorithms are given completely free rein to check competitor prices and set prices accordingly. These advanced pricing engines instantly see that, with ACE gone, they are not in a race to the bottom with a quasi-suicidal discounter, whose aim seems to be to "lose a dollar on every sale but make it up on volume." With no low-end competition, the algorithms synchronize an aggressive upward march, like the brooms in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," stepping right over Mickey Mouse, and bringing prices to historic peak levels because there is no independent disruptor breaking the formation.

F. Absolute Price Inelasticity: The Captive Audience

Question: why does this maximal price strategy work without causing the "destruction of demand" that would be expected normally with a price increase of this size? Answer: because one of the characteristics of the Maui car rental market is extreme inelasticity of demand with respect to price. A trip to Maui is a highly deliberate, premium financial commitment. By the time a family locks in thousands of dollars on non-refundable airline tickets and non-refundable resort stays, they are fully committed to the vacation. And just as importantly, they view a vehicle not as an optional luxury, but as an absolutely essential utility. Everybody knows they cannot walk from Kahului to the resorts. Everybody knows that Ubers or taxis across the island quickly add up. Everybody knows you cannot drive the back road to Hana without a rental car. And everybody knows that you cannot watch the sunrise from the top of Haleakala without a rental car. Everybody knows, that's how it goes (Leonard Cohen). People believe what they are told, and a rental vehicle becomes non-negotiable. Travelers grumble but ultimately swipe their cards. The algorithms understand this consumer psychology perfectly: they know you think you need the vehicle, they know you have the money to pay for it, and they know you have nowhere else to turn. Cha-Ching.

G. Key Takeaway for Smart (And Even Not-So-Smart) Travelers

The days of legacy, slow-moving rental car price updates are officially dead. We now operate in a hyper-reactive, machine-learning-dominated ecosystem where an unresolved shipping backlog for a safety recall can trigger a multi-vehicle price explosion in a matter of hours. We warn customers that prices change daily; on our own screens, we see price and availability change by the hour and sometimes by the minute. But don't despair. If there is any good news in this week's data, it is that the massive premium carried by last-minute bookings is finally starting to show signs of narrowing. While minivans remain off the table, economy/compact cars dropped 20% week-over-week as algorithms briefly overshot consumer breaking points and had to liquidate excess weekend slots. If seasonal travel patterns hold, we expect prices to plateau here for a few weeks before gently declining toward shoulder-season levels by the end of July - still higher than last year's shoulder season, but less than the absurd levels they sit at now.

Your best defense remains unchanged: lock in a flexible, cancelable reservation as early as possible to secure your baseline safety net, and keep a sharp eye on our weekly tracker to exploit the moments when the machines are forced to blink - and blink they will, we promise.

HOW DO WE GET OUR MAUI CAR RENTAL PRICE DATA?

Prices for Maui car rentals vary from week to week, and the company offering the lowest price also changes from week to week. Furthermore, one company may be offering the lowest price in one vehicle category, for example mid-size cars, while a different company has a better price on another category, for example mini-vans.

Beginning in July 2024, we've tracked the prices on seven vehicle categories - compact, mid-size, Jeep, convertible, SUV, 7-seat SUV, and minivan - from 10 different companies at Maui's Kahului Airport (OGG): Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Hertz, National, Payless, SiXT, and Thrifty. Each week, for every vehicle type, we noted which company offered the lowest price. Our weekly price-tracking for the lowest price economy car category goes back to July 2023 - more than one year. These are the data for the charts we post every week.

Figure 4. Week-by-week variation of Maui car rental prices averaged over five years, from 2013 to 2018.

Previously we conducted a five-year price-tracking study for the lowest price economy car category beginning in February 2013 and continuing to February 2018. A sample of these results is in Figure 6, that shows the five-year average of the price over a one-year duration. For details of this massive price-tracking undertaking, and the most important findings on how and when to rent a car, see our blog post of July 14, 2024 titled "When is the best time to rent a car in Maui? "

HOW TO CHECK RATES AND AVAILABILITY FOR MAUI CAR RENTAL

Look for Maui car rental prices, or check our booking site at rentals.mauicarrental.biz. This site gives you access to all vehicles from eight different companies - Ace, Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Payless, and Thrifty - at all their Maui locations, that include the Airport rentacar center, Kahului town locations nearby the airport, and resort locations in Kihei/Wailea, and Ka'anapali. With so many options to choose from, you are assured to find the rental car that matches your preferences and your budget for your Maui trip - and there is never a cancellation penalty if you have to change plans.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

Frank Saab is a thought leader in the rental car industry, quoted by influential publications like SFgate.com. He is the editor of this blog published by Frank's Friendly Cars Maui Car Rental LLC, an independent car rental company operating in Maui, Hawaii, since 2006. Frank's offers low prices on affordable older cars and discount prices on new cars, with a "Lowest Price Guarantee" that assures you of getting the best deal on your rental. Visit our website at www.mauicarrental.biz, or call us at 808-280-1196.

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Price Data Sources: rentalcars.com, rentals.mauicarrental.biz

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