YVR Airport to Canada Place: Rent a Car or Ride?

On those numbers, two of you pay about C$61 for the car — against roughly C$23 for two weekday train fares or one C$46 cab.

The car doesn’t win this ride. It still needs returning near the ship — and the closest brand desk is about a mile from the terminal.

The car starts to make sense when it keeps going — a night in Whistler, or a drive to Seattle after the ship.

The decision page sets out every train and cab fare in full.

The counters are on the ground floor of YVR’s parkade, steps from the terminal; Enterprise’s is on level P0 across the street from the main terminal.

On site: Avis, Alamo, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Hertz, National and Thrifty. Off site, by shuttle from the courtesy zones: Europcar, Routes, Sixt and West Coast Car Rental — twelve brands in all, by our count.

At night the hours matter more than the rate. Avis 6 AM–1 AM; Hertz 6 AM–midnight; Enterprise 6:30 AM–11:59 PM; National 7–11; Dollar/Thrifty and Sixt 6–11 (brand pages and YVR’s listings differ).

Brand pages and YVR’s own listings disagree on hours: Avis 6 AM–1 AM on its page, 6:30–midnight on YVR’s; Hertz 6–midnight on its Australian page, 6–11 on YVR’s. Plan on the shorter of the two.

A flight landing near midnight can arrive after your brand’s counter has shut, so check its closing time against your landing before you book.

Avis lists 24-hour drop-off, and Enterprise, National and Alamo take keys in drop boxes after hours — a late return is easier than a late collection.

YVR charges C$5.75 a rental day, capped at seven days (its 2025 fee schedule; we found no 2026 schedule). The cap tops the charge out at about C$40 a rental, our arithmetic — a week and a month pay the same.

Enterprise’s downtown page lists a 19.15% premium location charge on one-way rentals ending at YVR; Avis says its airport concession fee recovers a share of revenue paid to the airport but gives no percentage. We use 19.15% for a YVR pickup, our assumption. At C$38 a day, that percentage adds about C$7.28 a day, our arithmetic. It scales with the rate, not the calendar.

Over a week the airport costs about C$103 more than a downtown desk on these assumptions, and about C$159 over two weeks.

The second week adds less because the facility charge has stopped — the percentage keeps climbing with every day.

That premium buys hours — the downtown desks close by early evening, and Hertz at the station shuts on Sundays, which the hub’s checker shows desk by desk.

Sixt’s shuttle leaves the Level 3 departures courtesy area (Door 5 international, Door 16 domestic; dial *79), about 11 to 13 minutes.

Europcar, Routes and West Coast Car Rental also collect from the courtesy zones. We didn’t find their shuttle timings. Ask when you book.

An off-site brand’s rate may look lower than the parkade’s. Whether it really is depends on the airport line. Read the fee section of the quote, not the daily headline.

Allow for the shuttle on the way back too — Sixt’s own estimate is above, and a wait at the stop comes on top of it.

Our routing puts YVR to Canada Place at 9.9 miles and about 27 minutes with no traffic, 9.7 miles going back. Holland America puts YVR at 9 miles and about 30 minutes from Canada Place.

We found no toll anywhere on the route.

At the far end, the terminal parkade lets you drop passengers for up to 15 minutes. Keeping the car for the week is a different bill, and the hub prices it.

If the car has to go back before you board, return it at YVR and take the train in. That’s often simpler than a downtown desk — the weekend hours there are short.

Discover Cars showed YVR rentals “from $38” a day (a Toyota Corolla through a shuttle supplier at $37.56), last updated Oct 1, 2026; the page doesn’t say which dollar, and it may show US visitors US$.

The same page gave an average of $43 a day, in the same unstated currency.

Read either figure as the floor of a search, not your price.

Enterprise lists a midsize car at three suitcases, so a Corolla-class car from a shuttle supplier won’t take four.

We use C$38 in our sums because the pick-up is in Canada — and we say so wherever it appears. If your screen shows US$, your total in Canadian dollars is higher than ours.

Deposits and the add-on coverage are the other lines that move, and our Discover Cars review covers both.

If you rent at all, rent for the days around the cruise, not the ride to it. Search YVR for those dates, then compare a downtown desk’s own quote with the airport lines removed.