One waycar hireCollect in one place · leave it in another

A one way car rental does not have to come back where you found it, and on an island this shape that is worth more than it sounds. This site searches every car on the island at once, and Tenerife is two coasts with a volcano between them: the drive from one to the other is over an hour. If your flights use different airports, or your holiday moves from the north to the south, returning a car to its starting point can cost you the better part of a day.

The numbers make the case better than the argument does. Tenerife South to Tenerife North is sixty-four minutes. Puerto de la Cruz back down to the southern airport is eighty-two minutes and ninety-seven kilometres, the longest routine drive on the island. Doing either of those twice, once to reach your holiday and once to give the car back, is most of a day of motorway that a different drop-off point removes entirely.

Between the two airports is where nearly every car on the island plays along, in both directions, which makes it the one to plan around. Dropping at a resort or in the capital works with fewer suppliers: the option is there, the choice of car is simply narrower. Whichever you pick, the fee sits on the car in the results, so a one way is priced before you commit rather than added at the counter.

01 South airport to north airport, 64 min

Seventy-two kilometres, and the deepest one-way on the island by a distance: most cars allow it. This is the booking for anyone landing at Reina Sofia and flying home from Los Rodeos, which is more common than people expect.

02 North airport to south airport, 65 min

The same route in reverse, and equally well supported. It suits the fortnight that starts green and wet in the north and finishes on a beach in the south, which is the itinerary most repeat visitors end up building.

03 South airport to Puerto de la Cruz, 82 min

Ninety-seven kilometres, and the drive most worth designing out of a holiday. The north coast town is where a one-way saves the most time; the choice of car is narrower than on the airport pair, so book it early.

04 South airport to the southern resorts, 30 to 33 min

Short, and it is not really about the driving: it is for the week where the car is wanted for the first few days and not the rest, so it goes back at the resort pickup point rather than being driven to the airport and taxied home from.

05 South airport to Santa Cruz, 59 min

Sixty-six kilometres to the capital, which suits a trip that ends with a few city days where a car is a liability. The narrowest supply of the routes on this list, so treat it as worth checking rather than assuming.

06 Resort to resort, across the island

Possible, with fewer suppliers again. If your two weeks are split between two bases, price it both ways: sometimes a one-way fee is less than the fuel and the hours of driving back, and sometimes it is not.

Drive times are free-flow, measured by routing, so a real journey is that or longer. The supply pattern is consistent: deepest between the airports, thinner toward the resorts and the capital. It is availability that narrows, never the option itself.

A one-way fee is a repositioning cost, and knowing that tells you when it will be small. Somebody has to get the car back to where it earns its living. On the airport pair that is close to free for the supplier, because cars are wanted at both ends every day, which is exactly why that route is the deepest and the cheapest. Drop a car at a resort pickup point with a small operation behind it and the same journey has to be made deliberately, which is what you are paying for.

The arithmetic is usually simple. Put the fee on one side and, on the other, the fuel and the hours of the return drive plus what you would otherwise pay in transfers at the far end. For the north-to-south fortnight the one-way normally wins outright. For a two-day car in a single resort it usually does not. Either way the fee is on the car in the results before you commit, so the sum is one you can actually do rather than guess at.

The first is the classic: land in the south, spend a few days on a beach, drive up through the crater on the TF-21, and finish in the north with the Anaga and Garachico before flying out of Los Rodeos. It crosses the island once, uses the best road on it as the link, and never doubles back.

The second is the reverse and it suits winter better: start in the north while the south is busiest, take the crater road south when the cloud sets in, and end the fortnight with sun and a short run to the terminal. Both need a one-way, both take about an hour of driving between the two halves, and both are the reason this option exists rather than a technicality on a booking form.

The questions below are the ones that decide whether a one-way is worth booking: which routes have the cars, what the fee is for, how much driving it saves and what changes about the booking. The rental conditions themselves are written out in full on the terms page.