What does full-to-full mean at Palma airport?

You collect the car with a full tank and return it full. You pay only for the fuel you actually use, at pump prices, and there is no service charge for the tank itself. It is almost always the cheapest arrangement, and there are petrol stations on the approach roads to the airport for the final top-up.

Is full-to-empty ever worth it?

Rarely. You pre-buy a full tank at the company’s rate, which is above pump price, and you are not refunded for what is left when you hand the keys back. It only breaks even if you return the car genuinely empty, which nobody plans accurately, and it removes the last-minute petrol stop as the only benefit.

Do I need an International Driving Permit for Mallorca?

An EU or EEA licence is accepted as it stands. Licences issued outside that area are usually accepted alongside an International Driving Permit, and some desks insist on one regardless of the legal position. Check with the company for your specific licence, and bring the physical card either way.

How early should I book a car for August?

April, and earlier is better. Island car hire has a fixed fleet that cannot grow for one month, so August prices rise as availability falls rather than on a schedule. Booking in April rather than July frequently halves the rate for the same car.

Can I take a hire car on the ferry to Ibiza or Menorca?

Often not without written permission, and sometimes not at all. Inter-island ferry travel is a common exclusion in Balearic rental contracts because the car leaves the company’s recovery area. Ask before you book the ferry, not after.

Full-to-full at Palma airport, and what else is on the contract

Picking a car up at Son Sant Joan usually means a shuttle, a queue and a fuel policy that decides whether the cheap rate stays cheap. What full-to-full actually commits you to, how the excess works and what it is worth paying to reduce it, and why an island fleet makes August a booking made in April.

Son Sant Joan handles most of the traffic that arrives on this island, and in the middle of summer it hands over an extraordinary number of cars in a short window. That volume is why Mallorca car hire can be genuinely cheap, and it is also why the difference between a good booking and a bad one is larger here than almost anywhere else in Spain.

Nearly all of it comes down to three lines on the contract: the fuel policy, the excess, and where the car actually is.

Full-to-full, and the three policies that are not

Fuel policy is the single line that most often turns a cheap rate into an expensive one.

Policy	What you pay	What you get back	Worth it?
Full to full	Only the fuel you use, at pump price	—	Yes, almost always
Full to empty	A full tank up front, at the company’s rate	Nothing for what is left	Rarely
Same to same	The fuel you use, matched to the gauge	—	Fine, but disputed more often
Quarter, half, etc.	A part tank up front	Nothing for what is left	No

Full-to-full needs one thing from you: a receipt from a petrol station close to the airport, dated within an hour or so of the return. Keep it. The dispute that follows a full-to-full return is almost always about whether the tank was truly full, and a timed receipt from a station three kilometres away closes it.

“Same to same” sounds identical and is not. It relies on both parties agreeing where a needle was pointing, which is exactly the kind of thing that becomes a charge four weeks later.

A view across the open driver's door of a small hire car in an airport car park, the dashboard and fuel gauge visible, a paper condition report and pen on the seat. — Photograph the gauge as part of the condition set, not afterwards. It is the one reading that changes on its own.

The excess is the actual price

The headline rate is a rental price. The excess is your exposure, and on the island it is usually somewhere between several hundred and a couple of thousand euros depending on the category. It is the amount you can be charged before any insurance starts helping.

You have three ways to deal with it, and they are not equivalent:

Accept it. Free, and fine if the excess is a sum you could lose without it mattering. Your deposit will be held at or near that figure.
Buy the desk’s excess reduction. Convenient, sold at the counter, and the most expensive per day by a wide margin. Its advantage is real, though: if something happens, you do not pay first and claim later.
Buy standalone excess insurance before you travel. Considerably cheaper for a week or more. The catch is that the rental company still charges you and still holds the deposit; you then claim the money back from your own insurer. You need the cash flow to absorb that gap.

Whichever you pick, look for what is excluded rather than what is covered. Tyres, glass, the underside and the roof are outside basic cover in a large share of contracts, and on Mallorca that matters more than it sounds. The narrow walled lanes inland and the unsurfaced tracks down to the smaller calas are exactly where alloys and undersides get damaged.

Where the car actually is

Not every pickup at Palma happens at the airport. The desks are consolidated away from the terminals, and a good many of the cheapest operators are further out again, reached by their own shuttle from a stop outside arrivals.

That changes your day in two ways. Arriving, add somewhere between thirty and forty-five minutes to everything after you clear baggage, and considerably more at peak times in summer when the queue at an off-site depot can run long. Leaving, work backwards from your flight with the shuttle included — the return check, the shuttle, and then the terminal.

A plain shuttle bus stop outside airport arrivals on Mallorca, a queue barrier and metal shelter, suitcases on the kerb, palms and an empty access road behind. — The shuttle leg is not in the rental price and not in the rental duration, but it is in your day at both ends.

It is worth pricing the alternative. If your week is based in Palma itself, a car is a liability in the old town — the centre is heavily restricted, parking is underground and paid, and the airport is fifteen minutes away by bus. Collecting a car for the days you actually leave the city, from a town depot rather than the airport, is frequently cheaper and always less time spent in a queue.

Why August is decided in April

An island has a fixed fleet. Cars cannot be moved in for a month the way they can between mainland cities, so summer availability is a hard ceiling rather than a soft one. Prices do not rise on a schedule; they rise as the last cars go.

The practical consequence: for August, book in April. For July, book in April too. Nothing you gain by waiting outweighs what you lose, because there is no late-availability discount in a market that sells out. Booking with free cancellation and re-checking once in June gets you the upside without the risk.

The one exception is the shoulder: in late October, and again in March, there is genuine slack in the fleet and last-minute rates can be lower than anything you would have booked ahead.

A few things specific to driving here

The Ma-10, the road along the Tramuntana, is the reason many people rent a car here at all. It is narrow, slow and spectacular, and in high season it carries coaches, cyclists and everyone else at once. Budget roughly double the time any map suggests, and be aware that some of the descents — the one down to Sa Calobra most of all — are single-track in places with nowhere to pass.

Parking in the towns along that coast is limited and metered, and in Sóller, Valldemossa and Deià it fills by mid-morning through the summer. If you are driving up there in August, the difference between leaving Palma at eight and leaving at ten is the difference between parking and not.

Fuel is generally cheaper away from the airport and the resorts, and the stations on the Ma-19 and around the industrial edge of Palma are the practical choice for the final top-up on a full-to-full return.