Moorea Rental Cars (The Ultimate Guide)

Moorea Rental Cars (the Ultimate Guide)

This guide to Moorea rental cars provides you with everything you need to know to rent a car for your trip to Moorea, French Polynesia. It includes all the options for renting a car and top car rental recommendations.

I’ve planned 3 trips to Moorea over the past 3 years, but 2 of those had to get postponed due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. My husband and I finally got to visit the island in September 2022 and stayed on Moorea for 10 days, all of which we had a rental car for and we HIGHLY recommend getting a rental car for your stay on the island. Out of all the places we’ve traveled, Moorea is a place where you need a rental car (or at least a scooter or bike minimum) to get around. Read below to see why and what our top recommendations are for getting Moorea rental cars.

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Why get a rental Car during your stay on Moorea?

1. To explore the island on your own time

Moorea only takes an hour to drive around the entire island. We ended up driving around the island twice while we were there (once in each direction) to take in the views and the local vibes. While the island is small, getting to places by car can take 15-30 minutes depending on where you’re going. Having a car in these situations was so essential!

2. To visit places outside where you’re staying

Even though Moorea is small, there are so many things to see and do, such as:

  • Eat at one of the delicious local restaurants. During our trip, it was great to drive to different local food spots, especially since they are decently spread out across the island.
  • Get some meals and snacks for your place at one of the grocery stores. This helped us save some money and we especially loved always having some prosciutto, cheese, and wine on hand!
  • Book a water excursion and drive to the meeting location to give yourself ultimate flexibility before/after the excursion. We booked a whale swimming excursion and had them pick us up. We ended up waiting for an hour after we got back to catch a ride back to our place. If we had driven, we could have stopped for food along our way home too.
  • Explore the beautiful beaches
  • Take in Moorea’s incredible views on one of the many hikes (especially the view from Belvedere Lookout)

3. Taxis are not really available on the island

(unless you pre-book your transportation needs)

4. If you get a scooter, you aren’t able to transfer much with you

We stayed at 2 separate places during our vacation in Moorea and having a car to transfer our luggage between these 2 places was so helpful! Also, if you do decide to get a scooter, be prepared to ride in a few rain showers

Things to know about Moorea Rental Cars before you rent

  1. Moorea is a small, remote island so there is a chance they run out of available cars. I recommend booking sooner than later after you book your flights to guarantee your rental car. However, we ended up waiting until 2 weeks before our flight and were still able to secure a car with Avis Pacificar Moorea.
  2. Although most Moorea car rentals are manual, we were still able to get an automatic rental car
  3. The websites for renting a car can be a bit glitchy – at least this was our experience with Avis Pacificar (their website is different than the usual Avis.com website).

Best Places to rent a car from for your Moorea trip

Rent a car in Moorea

All locations for Moorea rental cars are located in Vai’are next to the ferry port on the eastern side of the island. Here are my recommended locations to rent a car from:

  1. Avis Pacificar Moorea: This is where we rented from and the process was very smooth. The location is right across from the ferry so very easy to walk across the street to pick up our car. Even though we waited to book our rental car until a couple of weeks out, we were still able to get an automatic rental car.
    • If you are flying: Avis Pacificar is a 5-minute drive from the airport and has a free shuttle to pick up / drop off your car. You can specify this on their website when making your reservation
  2. Europcar Moorea: This is another great option with a location right across from the ferry
    • If you are flying: you can specify “Moorea Airport” when making your reservation
  3. Autorent Moorea: We looked into this option for our trip and it seems like another great choice. We filled out the form online to request a rental car for the dates we needed and received an email response within 24 hours with the availability they had. This location is a 5-minute drive from the ferry.  

Rent a car in Tahiti and take it to Moorea on the ferry 

Are you spending time in Tahiti too? If so, you may only want to make 1 car reservation in Tahiti and bring the car with you to Moorea and back to reduce your time at car rental locations. 

  • Note that if you go with this option, the ferry ticket will cost you a bit more. Pedestrian ferry tickets are about $15 a person while small car tickets are around $80 and don’t include pedestrians in the ticket. Visit the Aremiti ferry site or the Terevau ferry site to see price specifics. The Aremiti ferry is a bit faster, while the Terevau ferry is a bit cheaper. We ended up going with the Aremiti and it was a great experience!
  • We did not go with this option, but if we were to go back, we would likely do this and just have 1 rental car for the entire trip

If you decide to rent a car in Tahiti to take with you on the ferry to Moorea, here are the main options:

Rent from Papeete Airport:

  1. Within the Faa’a International Airport, there is Avis, Hertz, and Europcar. This would be my recommendation if you want a car for your entire stay because it’s easy to pick up after you land and drop off before your departing flight. We got a 2-day rental with Hertz for our time in Tahiti and it was very easy to pick up and drop off before our departing flight.
    • One thing to note is that they may charge you per kilometer driven. We had this happen to us and it was 54 xfp per kilometer (we drove from Papeete down to Teahupoo and back up around the back side of Tahiti Nui and it cost an additional $80).

Rent from downtown Papeete:

As an alternative, there are Avis and Hertz locations in/near Papeete. The downside to renting from these compared to the airport is their hours are a bit smaller than the airport so you will have to make sure they are open during your desired pick-up/drop-off times.

Aremiti Ferry (with the door open for where cars drive onto the ferry)
Entering the harbor in Moorea

I hope this guide to Moorea rental cars helps you plan your trip. Feel free to drop a comment below if you have experience with Moorea rental cars or if you have any questions before your trip!

Need more tips on how to plan your trip? Read here to break it down into 10 simple steps. 

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