Day hire or separate transfers: the arithmetic, and when the cheaper one is wrong

People ask whether it is cheaper to take the car for the whole day instead of booking each leg. The honest answer is no, and it is worth showing the numbers rather than talking around them.

What the two actually cost

A half day is five hours and 150 km, €190 for the saloon and €240 for the van. A full day is ten hours and 300 km, €350 or €420. Per car, not per person, with fuel, tolls, parking and the waiting at every stop inside the price.

Now the same days booked as transfers. Ljubljana to the Postojna Cave and back is two legs at €70 each, €140 in total, against €190 for the half day. Ljubljana to Bled, Bled to Bohinj and Bohinj home is three legs, €265, against €350 for the full one. Ljubljana to Piran and back is €270.

Transfers win every time, by fifty to ninety euro. If the only question is the total, book the transfers. That is the whole of the price argument and it does not go our way.

What the extra money buys

A transfer ends when you get out. The car leaves, because it has somewhere else to be, and the next one arrives at a time you had to name before you knew how the day would go.

That is the part people underestimate. The Postojna Cave tour runs about ninety minutes, of which part is on the underground train — a figure you can plan around. The Vintgar Gorge is not like that: the gorge trail and the walk back take about three hours if you do it properly, and nobody knows in advance whether they will want the full loop or the short version. Book a return transfer for 14:00 and you have decided that question at breakfast, in a hotel, before seeing the place.

Day hire is not buying kilometres. It is buying the car standing still: waiting at the cave, waiting while lunch runs long, and the route changing at two in the afternoon because somebody wants to see one more thing.

It is also one booking rather than three. Three transfers means three pickup times to agree, three confirmations, and three chances for one of them to be twenty minutes off.

When you should book the transfers instead

• One destination, and you are staying there. A day hire that ends where it started is paying for a return you do not need.
• Airport to hotel, or hotel to airport. A transfer is exactly the right shape for it.
• A move from one town to the next with the luggage. One leg, one price.
• A day where every stop has a firm time you already know and will not change.

Half the enquiries we answer are this, and the answer is a transfer and a smaller invoice. Say what the day looks like and we will tell you which one it is.

When the day is the right shape

• Several places in one day: Bled with the gorge, Bohinj added if the weather holds.
• Travelling with children, where the pauses happen when they happen.
• A business day with meetings in two towns and gaps between them.
• A cruise call in Koper, where the hours ashore are fixed and the ship does not wait — priced from the terminal rather than from Ljubljana, since the car has to get there first.

The hours and kilometres, and what happens past them

Five hours and 150 km on a half day, ten hours and 300 km on a full one. Past either, an extra hour is 45 EUR and an extra kilometre 1 EUR. Those limits are generous for the days listed above — Bled with the gorge is about 120 km, Bled with Bohinj about 190 — and the point of saying the rate out loud is that you hear it before we leave rather than at the end.

What the price does not include

Entry tickets. The Vintgar Gorge, the Vogel cable car, Bled castle and the boat out to the island are all paid where you buy them, and some of them sell out in season.

One thing worth knowing before planning a winter day around it: the Vintgar Gorge closes for the season, roughly November to March, for safety rather than for the want of visitors. The Postojna Cave is open all year, which is why so many winter days end up there.

So: if the total is what matters and the day has one destination in it, book transfers and keep the difference. If the day has three places in it and one of them is a gorge you have never seen, the car standing outside is the thing you are actually paying for.