Tampa · TPA
Car rental in Tampa
A small airport, civilized traffic and the best Gulf beaches half an hour away. It's Florida's easiest way in — and the most underrated.
What to do
The sun sets on the sea, not behind you
The Gulf coast is the opposite of the Atlantic: calm water, almost white sand and the sun setting into the sea. Thirty minutes by car and you trade the airport for that.
Clearwater is the easiest, with everything you need — and at dusk Pier 60 turns into a craft market with live music. St. Pete Beach is calmer, with the pink Don CeSar hotel as the landmark. And on the way to Sarasota is the Sunshine Skyway, five miles of bridge over the bay with yellow cables rising out of the middle of the roadway.
- Clearwater ~30 min · the most complete
- St. Pete Beach ~35 min · calmer
- Skyway ~1 h · the bridge is the trip
How it works
Where the car is at TPA
The exact spot is arranged for your flight, and you get the photo on WhatsApp with the level and the number.
TPA links the terminal to the garages by SkyConnect, and the Economy Garage is the farthest one — which is why the signage matters. Remember “level 5, aisle 7 orange”: the rows are identified by color, and orange is ours. Pickup day, step by step.
What to do
An island with no road, and a Dalí museum
Caladesi Island has been voted the best beach in the United States, and there is no road to it: the ferry leaves from Honeymoon Island and takes twenty minutes. That's why it stays almost empty even in high season.
Across the bay, in St. Petersburg, is the Dalí Museum — the largest collection of the painter's work outside Spain, in a building with a glass bubble coming out of the wall. And in Tampa, Ybor City holds the 19th-century cigar factories, with roosters loose in the street.
If you're travelling with kids, Busch Gardens puts a roller coaster and an African safari on the same ticket — and it's twenty minutes from the airport, without the Orlando crowds.
How it works
Tolls around Tampa
Tampa has fewer toll roads than South Florida, but the main ones — the Selmon Expressway, the Veterans Expressway and the Sunshine Skyway itself — charge by camera or transponder. All our cars have a transponder, so you go straight through.
| Region | Per day | Cap per rental |
|---|---|---|
| Orlando and Tampa | US$ 11.99 | US$ 99.00 |
| Miami and Fort Lauderdale | US$ 19.99 | US$ 149.99 |
Tampa is in the cheaper band: from 9 rental days on, the amount hits the cap. How tolls work.
What to do
Four Michelin stars, in a city nobody expects
Tampa made it into the Michelin Guide and has kept four starred restaurants: Ebbe, Kōsen, Koya e Rocca. None of them is in a resort hotel — they're on city streets, with short menus and hard-to-get reservations.
And the tradition here is smoked fish: Ted Peters, family-run since 1951, is still practically the same, with outdoor benches and the smoker in plain sight. The five places we recommend are right below.
How it works
Which car makes sense in Tampa
People arriving through Tampa are almost always heading to the beach or driving on to Orlando. Pick by what you're going to do — the photo changes with it.
People arriving through Tampa are almost always heading to the beach or driving on to Orlando on I-4. For the beach, what matters is the trunk: chairs, an umbrella and a cooler take up more room than you'd think. For the drive to the parks, a comfortable sedan does the job. See the whole fleet.
What to do
Where to eat along the way
The region lives on fish, and the good places are old and family-run. Not one of these five is a chain.
How it works
How long to where you're going
Tap a destination.
Questions from people renting in Tampa
Send us your dates and we'll put together the locked price for your car in Tampa.
Talk on WhatsApp See the price nowPhotos: Busch Gardens - "Montu" Roller Coaster (49 by Roger W from Sarasota, Florida, U.S.A. (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Caladesi island beach 01 by No machine-readable author provided. Phi (CC BY-SA 2.5) · St. Pete Dali Museum03 by Ebyabe (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Don Cesar by porkfork6 from Saint Petersburg, FL, USA (CC BY 2.0) · SunshineSkywayBridge-4SC 6643-15 by Robert Neff (CC BY 2.0) · Centro Ybor, Ybor City, Tampa, Florida by Peter K Burian (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.