Hamburg Airport to the Kiel Cruise Port: Rent a Car or Take the Coach?

Hamburg Airport puts its rental desks on the arrivals level of Terminal 2: Avis/Budget, Enterprise/Alamo, Europcar, Green Motion, Hertz/Dollar/Thrifty, Sixt and Wheego.

Of those, Sixt and Avis printed hours we could read. They differ most at the weekend.

Sixt stays open until 8 PM on Saturday and 11 PM on Sunday. Avis shuts at 3 PM on Saturday and doesn’t open until 11 AM on Sunday.

A Saturday-evening landing is a Sixt booking — or a long wait.

If you’d rather collect in Kiel, the town desks and their odd Saturday sit on the hub’s checker.

The defaults are two travellers and one day at our assumed €45 (about US$50) — €45 before fuel, against €52 for two coach seats, about US$60.

Type ADAC’s €2.258 into the pump box and the 59-mile run adds about €17 — roughly €62 for the car, our arithmetic.

So for two, the coach wins by about €10 before any one-way fee. Change the travellers to four and the coach climbs to €104, while the car stays near €62.

The one-way fee is the gap we can’t fill. You collect at the airport and hand the car back in Kiel — and Enterprise says only that its fee “varies” and appears at booking.

Read it off your quote and type it in; the Hamburg page has more on how the brands word it.

Unless you’re driving on after the cruise, the car comes back before you board — the coach doesn’t need returning.

The lines don’t agree on how far Hamburg Airport is: MSC’s US site says about 84 km, MSC’s Finnish site 95 km to the cruise port, and AIDA about 90 km with a taxi taking “etwa 1 bis 1,5 Stunden” (one to one and a half hours).

Our routing gives 58.7 miles (94.5 km) and 66 minutes to Ostseekai, and 61.9 miles (99.6 km) and 72 minutes to Ostuferhafen, on empty roads.

AIDA’s hour to an hour and a half is the safer planning figure — our routing assumes empty roads and no stops.

There’s no toll on the way — the hub explains why.

Plan on 90 minutes with a car, not 66.

The Kielius coach runs from Hamburg Airport’s Airport Plaza to Kiel’s bus station (ZOB) via Neumünster: €26 one way online or €27 on board, €48 or €49 return, €15 for a child single online.

The summer timetable (March to October) has about 13 runs a day, the first at 5:50 AM and the last at 11:45 PM, taking about 1 hour 35 minutes. From November a winter timetable applies, so check Kielius for your date — a flight landing at 10 PM still has a coach to catch.

The Deutschlandticket isn’t valid on it. Kielius’s fare page lists card payment on board, but a notice about four newer coaches said otherwise, so carry a few euros. Online tickets close one hour before departure, and a limited number of Sparpreis seats start at €16.

Return tickets are €48 online, about US$55 — so a couple’s round trip comes to €96 for both directions.

MSC says the ZOB is about 200 m from Kiel Hauptbahnhof. Ostseekai is a walk from there; Ostuferhafen is the bus or MSC’s shuttle, which the should-you-rent page prices.

Hamburg Airport says you can arrange a fixed price for trips outside Hamburg, but publishes no figure for Kiel; its partners are Hansa-Taxi, Taxiruf, Taxi Hamburg and the FreeNow app.

Ask the taxi desk for a fixed Kiel price before you load the bags — and compare it with the car.

Enterprise Kiel takes a €250 security deposit plus the estimated rental; on a credit card the deposit is blocked rather than charged. It accepts Maestro, VPAY, Visa Electron, Visa, Mastercard and Amex. That €250 is about US$280, held on top of the rental.

Sixt at Hamburg Airport asks for your licence, passport and a credit card in your name. Bring the passport, not just the licence.

Enterprise Kiel’s damage excess is €1,200 for Mini to Compact cars, €1,400 for Intermediate and Standard and €1,700 for Full-size and Premium; its Damage Waiver takes that to zero — €1,200 is about US$1,345 and €1,700 about US$1,910, our conversion.

Price the waiver against that excess, not against nothing — the excess is what you’d owe after a scrape.

Enterprise Kiel rents from age 21 and adds €25 a day under 25, about US$30 a day. Sixt at Hamburg Airport rents from 18, with higher ages for some categories and an under-age fee it doesn’t price.

Discover Cars says manual and automatic cars are available across categories in Kiel and at Hamburg Airport; no brand gave us a count of automatics, so filter for automatic when you search.

Bring an Enterprise car back below the level you took it at and you pay a refuelling service fee on top of the fuel — so top it up before the return.

Search your dates: Hamburg Airport prices vary by day, and the one-way fee to Kiel shows in the total.

Filter for automatic if you need one, and set the drop-off to Kiel so the one-way fee shows in the total.

Hold off if you’re a couple heading straight to the ship. The coach is the simpler answer.