Alanya Gazipasa Airport Car Hire (GZP): Collect on Arrival

Two airports

Only one of them is close

Alanya is served by two airports that are nothing alike, and which one your ticket says decides how the first day of the holiday goes. Gazipasa is the local one. Antalya is the one most long haul flights use. The numbers below are the whole argument.

40 km

From Gazipasa (GZP) east of the centre of Alanya, about 45 minutes on the D400.

125 km

From Antalya (AYT) in the other direction, about two hours on the same coast road.

719

Cars listed across Alanya when we last measured the live feed, from every supplier on it.

EUR 23-39

Per day across the first hundred of those cars, for a week picked up two weeks ahead.

Distances are approximate and the prices move with the season, so treat both as the shape of the thing rather than a quotation. The grid above the fold is the live version.

Landing at a small airport, step by step

Most airport pickup advice is written for places with four terminals and a car hire shuttle. Gazipasa has neither, and the whole sequence from the aircraft door to the coast road is usually quicker than the queue would be at a bigger field.

Wheels down

The aircraft parks on the apron and you walk off, often straight onto the tarmac. There is one terminal, so there is no shuttle to find, no satellite pier and no terminal letter to check twice against your boarding pass.

Passport control

A short row of desks. On a quiet evening it is a few minutes. When two charters land within the same half hour it becomes the one place the airport backs up, which is worth knowing before you promise anyone an exact pickup time.

Baggage

One belt in a hall you can see from end to end. If your supplier is already inside, you will usually spot the name board from the carousel rather than hunting for it afterwards.

Doors to car park

The walk to the car is measured in metres, not in travelators. Short stay parking sits directly opposite the terminal doors, which is why the handover here tends to take longer than the walk to the car does.

On the D400

A couple of minutes of airport road and you are on the coast highway. Turn west and the sea is on your left the whole way in.

Meeting a supplier who has no desk

No company on this comparison owns a counter inside the terminal, because at this size nobody does. The car comes to you instead, and four small things decide whether that feels smooth or stressful.

Book

Put the real flight number on the reservation, not just the airline. It is the only field that tells anyone when to stand by the doors.

Message

Confirm the day before with a number that will actually work in Turkey. Terminal wifi is a fallback, not a plan, and roaming can take a while to attach.

Meet

There is nothing to queue at. Somebody waits past customs with your name on a board, and the car is a short walk away in the car park opposite.

Photograph

Walk the car once with the phone recording: wheels, bumpers, windscreen, the fuel needle. On a night arrival use the car park lights and film rather than photograph.

The D400

Driving out, east and west

Everything on this coast happens on one road, and the only question is which way you turn onto it and for how long. Pick the leg that matches your ticket.

About 45 minutes, roughly 40 km

GZP to the centre

Turn west out of the airport and the D400 runs along the shoreline the whole way. You pass Kargicak and Mahmutlar first, then Kestel and Tosmur, and the castle headland appears across the bay long before you reach it. It is an easy first drive after a flight: dual carriageway for most of it, well lit, and slow enough through the built up stretches that nothing is sprung on you.

Around half an hour, less than the run into town

GZP to Mahmutlar

This is the part people get wrong when they book. Mahmutlar and Kargicak sit between the airport and the old town, so if your apartment is at the eastern end of the strip you arrive sooner than someone staying by the harbour. Landing at Gazipasa and staying east of the centre is the single best combination on this coast, and it is worth checking against the airport before you choose the accommodation.

About two hours, roughly 125 km

Antalya to Alanya

The same D400, in the other direction, for four times as long. You clear the eastern suburbs of Antalya, then it is a steady run past the turnings for Manavgat and Side with the Taurus mountains on your right. None of it is difficult. It is simply two hours of driving at the end of a flight, on an unfamiliar road, often in the dark, and that is the real cost of landing at the big airport.

Two hours of driving, plus whatever you give the stop

Antalya with a stop

If you must land at Antalya, do not fight the drive, use it. Manavgat and its waterfall are about 45 km short of the destination and Side is about 65 km short, both a few minutes off the highway. Breaking the journey turns a tiring transfer into the first half day of the holiday, and it is far easier to do in your own car than on a transfer bus that has nine other drop offs to make.

Which airport your booking should say

A rental starts where you tell it to start, and changing that afterwards is the awkward part. Read the two columns side by side before you commit the pickup point, not after the flight is paid for.

Gazipasa, GZP

Distance: About 40 km east of the centre, and less than that to the eastern districts.
Drive: Around 45 minutes, one road, no city to cross at either end.
Arrivals: One terminal, one belt, a walk of a couple of minutes to the car park.
Catch: Fewer routes, and more of them seasonal. Check your month has a direct flight before you plan around it.

Antalya, AYT

Distance: About 125 km west, with the whole resort strip to drive through at the far end.
Drive: About two hours, often after a flight that already took four.
Arrivals: Separate terminals, signage to follow, and a proper walk before anyone hands over a key.
Why anyway: The routes. Most long haul and most year round services land here, and sometimes the ticket decides for you.

The honest summary is that a car matters more if you land at Antalya and matters sooner if you land at Gazipasa. Arriving at the small airport, the car is the difference between being at the apartment in three quarters of an hour and waiting for a transfer bus to fill. Arriving at the big one, the car is the difference between two hours you control and two hours of somebody else stopping at nine hotels along the way.

Gearbox is the other thing worth settling before you land rather than at the kerb. Of the first hundred cars on the live list for Alanya, 61 are manual and 39 are automatic, so the automatic is available but it is not the default and it is not the cheap end of the range. If the plan involves the climb up to Sapadere Canyon or the narrow lanes above Dim Cayi, the second pedal is worth filtering for while you still have a choice, because the cheapest cars in the window go first.

One last practical note for a Gazipasa pickup: the card. Of that same hundred cars, 43 block nothing at all on arrival, which matters more here than it would at a big airport, since there is no counter to wait at while a hold clears and no second desk to try if something declines. Sorting that at the booking stage removes the only part of this handover that has ever gone slowly.

Pick the airport, then pick the car

Set GZP and your landing date, and the list above rebuilds itself from what is genuinely free in Alanya that week.

Search available cars

Gazipasa pickups: the questions we get asked

Nothing, provided the flight number is on the booking. The supplier works from the arrival board rather than from the time you typed into the form, so a two hour delay moves the meeting along with you. What does break a handover is a different aircraft: if you are rebooked onto another service, send the new flight number as soon as you have it. A late landing is also the moment a no deposit car earns its keep, because an empty arrivals hall at two in the morning is a poor place to discuss a card hold.

Often yes, but it is a one way rental across roughly 125 km and it is priced as one. Set the drop off point in the search form before you start comparing rather than after you have picked a car: suppliers who allow the combination fold the fee into the price you see, and the ones who do not simply stop appearing in the results. It is a combination worth pricing if you are flying home on a long haul route, because Antalya has connections that the smaller airport does not.

Shorter than the drive into the centre, which catches people out. Mahmutlar lies east of the old town, between it and the airport, so it is the first substantial place you reach after turning west onto the D400. Allow around half an hour in normal conditions and a little more in high summer, when the coast road through Kargicak and Mahmutlar fills up with beach traffic in the late afternoon.

Do not leave it until the airport approach road. The fuel stations are strung along the D400, so fill up while you are still running along the coast rather than after you have turned off for the terminal. Stations are attended: you ask for a full tank or name an amount in lira, and cards are normally accepted. Check the policy on your voucher first, because a full to full car needs a receipt to prove the tank and a car handed over part full does not.

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Alanya Gazipasa Airport Car Hire (GZP):Collect on Arrival

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