Delivery
Priced per car, not per town. Some Costa Adeje listings include it and some charge for it, and the figure is on the listing before you book.
Car hire in Costa Adeje
Car hire in Costa Adeje with the car brought to the address you are staying at. Deposit, cover level and cancellation terms are shown before you book.
Prices are in euros. The deposit and the cancellation terms are shown on each car before you book.
Costa Adeje is spread out, which is exactly why a car changes the week here. The hotels run for several kilometres along the coast from Fanabe up to La Caleta, the good eating is at either end of that line rather than in the middle of it, and the walk between them in August is longer than it looks on a map.
There is no office here. Costa Adeje is a city-delivery point, which means the car is brought to the address you give: your hotel entrance, your apartment block, wherever you are staying inside the town. You hand over the licence and the card there, you look round the car with the person delivering it, and that is the handover. Collecting at the south airport instead gives you the car from the moment you land, thirty minutes up the road: meeting the car at the south terminal works the same way, minus the address.
How does delivery to my hotel actually work?
You give an address when you book and somebody meets you there at the agreed time. The address can be a hotel, an apartment, a villa or a car park entrance, and the practical advice is to give the one a driver can actually stop at, which is not always the address printed on the booking.
Whether that delivery is included or charged is set on each car rather than by the town, because the supplier who owns the car decides it. The listing carries its own delivery price, and some cars carry none at all. Read it where it is written rather than trusting a number a website typed months ago.
The paperwork at delivery is the same paperwork as at the airport. The driving licence card itself, in the main driver's name and in Latin script, with an expiry no earlier than the end of the rental; copies and phone apps are not accepted. Then the card, which may have to be a physical embossed credit card in that same name, and a deposit that is held rather than spent. All of it is stated during booking and repeated on the voucher, so the delivery is straightforward when the documents match the booking and difficult when they do not.
Parking, and the thing that catches people out
Spanish kerb colours are the whole system and they are worth ten seconds of attention. Blue lines are metered bays with a time limit, so there is a machine somewhere on that street and a ticket goes on the dashboard. Unmarked white bays are free. Yellow means no parking at all.
If your hotel has no parking of its own, the unmarked white bays uphill from the seafront are free, and an evening walk downhill is the sensible plan. Fuel is easy: there is a BP at Siam Mall open around the clock, a DISA at San Eugenio that closes in the late afternoon, and a TGAS at the La Caleta junction where the TF-1 comes off. Fill up at one of those rather than waiting for the airport, since returning the car with the fuel it came with is a rental condition and the last morning is the wrong time to be looking for a station.
Where a car actually gets you from here
Everything on the west of the island opens up, and that is the argument for the car rather than the taxi rank. Los Gigantes and its cliffs are twenty-seven minutes. Masca is twenty-nine, subject to the access control on the road in. The Parador up in the Teide crater is fifty-two minutes, which makes a morning start entirely reasonable and a sunset return worth planning for, since the last stretch is mountain road in the dark.
Closer in, the older resort down at Los Cristianos is thirteen minutes and has the ferry port and a working town centre behind the beach. Playa de las Americas is eight. And the quieter bays are fourteen minutes north at Playa Paraiso; car hire in Playa Paraiso is delivered to an address there in the same way.
One limit that matters more here than in most places: hire cars are permitted on paved public roads only. The dirt tracks in the hills are tempting, well graded in places and completely outside what the rental allows, and they are also where the underside of a car meets the rocks that standard cover does not pay for.
What size of car should I book for Costa Adeje?
Small, unless you are four adults with luggage. The resort roads are wide by Canarian standards but the hotel car parks are not, and the covered ones on this coast run to about two metres of headroom, which is the number to check if you have booked something tall. A small hatchback parks in the free bays that a bigger car cannot use, and it climbs the TF-1 out of the resort without complaint.
The other question is the gearbox. Automatics are a minority of what is listed, so if you want one, book it early rather than expecting to choose on the day; the same is true of anything with seven seats. The models that come up most often here are the small European hatchbacks and the crossovers built on them, and the live search is the only honest place to see which of them are actually available for your dates.
Your dates. Your starting point.
Compare the cars available for your trip, then check the payment card and deposit requirements for the one you choose.
Find a carPlaya de las Americas8 min
Playa Paraiso14 min
Los Cristianos13 min
Free-flow driving times from Costa Adeje.
The drive down from the airport
Half an hour on the TF-1, and there is very little to it: dual carriageway the whole way, no tolls, and a resort exit that is signed long before you need it. The one thing to know is that the times on this site are free-flow, so check a live map before a flight; the exits, the traffic and what to do about the fuel are the whole of the run from Tenerife South Airport to Costa Adeje.
Your Costa Adeje drive
The deposit
Held rather than spent. How it is taken varies by supplier, and how the balance is paid, how much is held and when it comes back are all shown while you book and repeated on the voucher.
The card
A physical embossed credit card in the main driver's name may be mandatory. Where a debit card is accepted it must also be physical, personalised and embossed in that name.
Where you may drive it
Paved public roads only. That rules out the graded dirt tracks in the hills, which is the one restriction that actually bites on this side of the island.
Useful answers
These come up because Costa Adeje has no office to walk into, so everything about the handover happens at your own front door.
Is there a rental office in Costa Adeje?
No. Costa Adeje is a delivery point: the car comes to the address you give inside the town. There is no counter here and no office.
How much does delivery cost?
It depends on the car rather than on the town, and some listings include it. The price sits on each listing before you book.
Can I collect at the airport and drop off in Costa Adeje?
Yes. Costa Adeje can be chosen as a drop-off in the search form independently of where you collected, and the one-way charge is shown with the price on each car.
What do the blue parking lines mean?
Metered, with a time limit and a machine on the street. Unmarked white bays are free and yellow means no parking. This is the standard Spanish system rather than anything local.
Where is the nearest fuel?
The BP at Siam Mall is open around the clock. There is a DISA at San Eugenio that closes in the late afternoon, and a TGAS at the La Caleta junction on the TF-1.
Do I need to bring the car back with a full tank?
You return it with the level you got it with. If it is lower you pay the difference at the supplier's rate, and if it is higher you are not compensated for it.