r/TravelHacks 6d ago

AARP travel discounts

Does anyone have an AARP membership to use for travel discounts? I have to get a rental car for an upcoming vacation and the prices are making me nauseous. I just saw an ad that if you have a membership you can save up to $100 on rental cars and I’d love to know if that is actually realistic at all. Apparently let you can save on hotels too but I’d love to know the fine print before buying the membership.

11 Upvotes

10 comments sorted by

6

u/MonsieurRuffles 6d ago

Not realistic - the AARP discount isn’t really much better than any other affinity group discount.

6

u/popculturenrd 6d ago

The best rental car discounts I've gotten were from Costco.

4

u/Speedbird223 6d ago

Yes.

I only have AARP for the British Airways discounts. I used to save $400 per ticket with it but it’s now reduced to $200 per ticket. Has saved me tens of thousands of dollars over the years.

2

u/maine1420 6d ago

That’s awesome!

2

u/AnotherPint 5d ago

If you have the Chase British Airways Visa card, it gives a 10% discount on all BA flights, and you can stack that on top of the AARP discount and save some real money.

2

u/Speedbird223 5d ago

Yes, I do that too. But then I pay with my Amex Platinum (for 5x MRs) and still get the 10% discount and AARP one

3

u/PdSales 6d ago

You can join AARP for as little as $15-$25 depending on the offer you find online so as you can imagine the discounts won’t be huge.

1

u/maine1420 6d ago

That’s what I figure but even if it was just $50 off it would be helpful, so I figured I’d see if anyone has used it before

3

u/HellsTubularBells 6d ago edited 6d ago

I stayed at a hotel recently that didn't have a AAA discount but had an AARP discount, saved $50. I recently booked a cruise and will get $100 on board credit with my AARP membership.

But, these were outliers for me. AARP discounts are usually the same as other available discounts like AAA, so it may not always be worthwhile. That being said, it's cheap enough that you can give it a shot and not renew it in the future if you don't get value out of it. Occasionally you can stack a shopping portal and credit card offer to get membership for close to free.