Hire cars and bikes all but fully booked for Games week
CAR and bike hire businesses have been hoisting the ‘sold out’ signs as Island Games competitors and spectators have snapped up the last available wheels for hire.
Harlequin Car Hire, local agents for Europcar, Avis and Value, said that all 220 cars across the group were booked out for next week.
A representative said they had 80 cars going specifically to Island Games teams.
‘We still have quite a few in the car park, but they are all booked to go out across the next couple of days,’ she said.
The island’s other major car hire company, Hertz, also confirmed it had few, if any, cars available for the next seven days.
And two wheels were proving just as popular as four with two of Guernsey’s best-known bike hire companies also having to turn away customers.
Adventure Cycles owner Dan Thwaite said there were no hire bikes left for the duration of the Games.
‘We are not sure if the bookings are from teams, media or islanders looking to get to events, but we are 100% out of bikes and are having to turn people away,’ he said.
‘With parking and road closures, bikes are going to be the best way to get around the island. It’s going to be the busiest week of the year.’
Go Guernsey manager Trudy Le Poidevin said it now only had a few bikes available for next week.
‘We are not totally hired out, but we are getting there,’ she said.
‘We are busier than we have been at this time in recent years.
‘There have been lots of pre-bookings, and we have people from here there and everywhere. It’s hard to tell if it’s all connected with the Island Games, but Visit Guernsey have hired some e-bikes and a cargo bike for foreign journalists, and I’ve just dropped off five mountain bikes for the Greenland football team.’
