Let’s Drive

Let’s Drive at a glance

• Founded in 1996, 100% Greek-owned, and part of the Gelasakis Group, whose broader travel and maritime roots go back to 1984. The brand also states that it is a member of the Hellenic Car Rental Association.
• Its network spans major Greek arrival points including Athens, Chania, Heraklion, Rhodes, Santorini, Thessaloniki, Corfu, Piraeus and more. Public location counts vary from 18 active locations to 27 locations to 30+ pickup points, which strongly suggests a mix of company stations, partner points and expanding franchise coverage.
• The fleet runs from Fiat 500 / VW Up / Corsa / Yaris territory all the way up to BMW X1, Audi Q3, Range Rover Sport, Jeep Wrangler, plus 7- and 9-seat vans.
• Review sentiment is mixed, not disastrous: strong on some booking platforms, middling on others, and poor on Trustpilot. That tells me routine rentals often go fine, but disputes hit hard when they happen.
• The biggest booking traps are the credit-card requirement, deposit hold, same-to-same fuel policy, and the fact that ferries/boats require written permission.

Where this company actually comes from

Let’s Drive is not a pop-up summer brand. The company says it was established in 1996 and is a 100% Greek company. It sits inside the Gelasakis Group, a privately owned Greek group active in travel, maritime and hospitality, with group roots dating back to 1984.

The public evidence also points pretty clearly to Crete, and specifically Souda/Chania, as the operational heart of the business. Greek Travel Pages listings identify Let’s Drive Souda Port as the branch office tied to multiple outstations, and Gelasakis traces its travel-division origin back to Souda Bay. So while the consumer-facing brand is national, its DNA looks distinctly Cretan.

As for philosophy, the brand presents itself as customer-first, value-led, and reliability-focused. That is not just marketing fluff: Gelasakis’ own material positions Let’s Drive as a provider for individual travelers, companies, organizations, government bodies and even military forces, which tells you this is built as a practical transport operator with scale, not just a leisure-only island broker.

Growth is still happening. One company page says 18 active locations, the main consumer site advertises 30+ locations across Greece, and a travel trade report from April 2026 says Let’s Drive currently operates in 27 locations and is expanding through a franchise model, while investing in digital tools and service upgrades. I read that not as a red flag, but as a sign that the network is growing and that different pages are counting different things.

Where can you actually pick up a car?

Coverage is one of Let’s Drive’s strongest cards. Official and trade listings point to stations in Athens Airport and downtown, Chania downtown, Chania Airport, Souda Port, Corfu Airport, Heraklion Airport, Heraklion Port, Piraeus, Rhodes Airport, Santorini Airport, and Thessaloniki Airport. Public directory listings also show Kalamata, Karpathos, Mykonos Airport and Port, Naxos Airport and Port, Patra, and Zakynthos Airport and Port.

That footprint matters because Let’s Drive is strongest where Greek trips actually begin: airports, ports, and island gateways. Gelasakis’ own language also points to particular strength in Crete and Piraeus, which fits the network map.

The more important nuance is how pickup works. In Athens, both KAYAK and DiscoverCars point to the same Koropi address rather than a clearly in-terminal desk, and review snippets mention free shuttle transfers plus occasional confusion between meet-and-greet and shuttle pickup. So for Athens especially, I would not assume a classic counter in Arrivals unless your voucher says so.

At port locations, the proposition is more intuitive. The Souda Port page explicitly markets the idea of having the vehicle ready for ferry arrivals, and Heraklion Port is also listed as a pickup point. That is exactly where a local Greek network can beat a generic airport-only operator.

What’s actually waiting for you in the garage?

This is not a one-shape-fits-all fleet. At the small end, Let’s Drive advertises Fiat 500s, Smart automatics, VW Up, Opel Corsa, Toyota Yaris automatic and similar city-friendly cars. In the middle, you move into Citroën C3, VW Golf, Suzuki Jimny, and crossover territory like Seat Arona, VW T-Cross, Suzuki Vitara and Citroën DS3 Crossback. At the upper end, the published fleet includes BMW 1 Series, BMW X1, Audi Q3, Volvo S60, Jeep Renegade, Jeep Wrangler, Range Rover Sport, plus people carriers such as the Opel Combo 7-seater, Peugeot Expert Traveller 9-seater, Citroën Spacetourer and VW Caravelle.

For real-world Greece trips, the smart picks are usually straightforward. I’d choose Mini or Economy for island bases and dense town centers, a compact crossover for longer Crete or mainland loops, and a van only when you genuinely need the seats and boot space. The company’s own terms also make one thing clear: an SUV here is still a road-trip tool, not a license for beach-track exploring, because off-road and unpaved-road use are prohibited.

The other takeaway is that Let’s Drive is not just selling the cheapest category and nothing else. The existence of premium cars, VIP vans, and multi-seat people movers suggests a brand that can handle both a budget airport run and a bigger family or transfer-heavy itinerary.

So, is Let’s Drive budget, mid-range, or premium?

My read: local-specialist mid-market.

Officially, Let’s Drive positions itself around value, coverage, and tailored service, and its consumer site advertises rates from €15/day. The fleet reaches into premium classes, but the brand experience itself does not read as fully premium from the review data.

What that means at the counter is simple. You are likely dealing with a company that can offer a good rate and useful local pickup points, but that may also be stricter and less frictionless than a premium international chain. The review pattern points to solid drop-off, decent vehicle cleanliness, and fair value when the process is smooth, but weaker scores around pickup speed, locating the office, and deposit/insurance friction.

So no, I would not sell Let’s Drive as luxury. I would sell it as a practical Greek operator with better network logic than glamour, especially if your route involves ports, islands, or multiple tourist hubs.

The truth behind the stars

One data-cleaning issue first: some marketplaces list the operator as “DRIVE S.A.”, while others show “Let’s Drive.” Because the addresses and network overlap, I treated those as the same operating brand where the listings clearly matched.

I also don’t weigh every review source equally. Closed-booking platforms tell me how ordinary rentals go. Open-review sites tell me how angry people are when something goes wrong. For Let’s Drive, the gap between those two views is the real story.

Platform by platform

• DiscoverCars: this is the best-looking data point. DiscoverCars shows DRIVE S.A. in Greece at 8.6/10 from 1,082 reviews, Athens Airport at 9.0/10 from 318 reviews, and a direct Let’s Drive Athens Airport page at 8.2/10 from 187 reviews. The recurring positives in the review snippets are helpful staff, easy drop-off, decent communication, and good value. The recurring negatives are waiting time, unclear pickup method, out-of-hours fees, insurance/deposit friction, and existing scratches or prior damage on the vehicle.
• Rentalcars: more restrained. The general brand page sits at 7.2/10 from 50+ ratings, with better scores for drop-off (8.2), car condition (7.8) and cleanliness (7.7) than for staff (6.9), value (6.7) and pickup speed (6.6). At Athens Airport, the score improves to 7.6/10 from 300+ ratings, but pickup speed is still only 6.1 and ease of finding the supplier is 6.9. That usually means the car itself is acceptable more often than not, but the start of the rental can feel clunky.
• KAYAK: KAYAK does surface Let’s Drive at Athens Airport and shows the same Koropi address, but I did not find a meaningful public review score to rely on there. For this brand, KAYAK is more useful for confirming presence and pickup location than for sentiment.
• Expedia: Expedia was the weakest source for supplier-specific sentiment in my research. On the public Athens pages I could access, Expedia highlighted Enterprise, Europcar and Alamo as top-rated brands, and I did not find a robust public Let’s Drive review surface worth using. That does not prove the brand is absent from Expedia inventory; it just means Expedia did not materially improve the sentiment picture here.
• Trustpilot: this is the hard warning signal. Trustpilot shows 2.0/5 from 44 reviews, labeled Poor. The complaints cluster around damage charges, credit-card and deposit rigidity, pressure to buy fuller coverage, and in some cases concerns about vehicle condition. One detailed Heraklion complaint described warning lights, weak air conditioning and a faulty tailgate strut. To the company’s credit, Trustpilot says it replies to 66% of negative reviews, usually within 48 hours, but the public sentiment there is still clearly negative.
• Forums: volume is thin, but the tone is revealing. Most forum references I found were from travelers saying the price looked very competitive and asking whether that meant the supplier was risky. I also found at least one Crete/Souda post describing an on-time handover and a normal rental experience. In other words, the forum story is not “disaster”; it is “cheap enough that people ask questions first.”

What customers consistently like

• Value for money, especially on aggregator sites.
• Friendly, helpful staff when the handover is straightforward.
• Easy drop-off compared with pickup.
• A practical, varied fleet rather than a bare-minimum economy offering.

The recurring red flags

• Strict card and deposit rules are a repeated frustration, especially for travelers trying to rely on debit cards or limited credit lines.
• Athens pickup logistics appear more fragile than drop-off, with repeated mentions of shuttle timing, meeting-point confusion, or slow starts.
• Damage disputes and pre-existing scratches come up often enough that I would treat pre-rental photos as mandatory, not optional.
• Occasional vehicle-condition complaints do exist, even if they are not the dominant pattern on every platform.

My verdict on the review story is this: Let’s Drive looks better on transactional travel marketplaces than on open-review sites. That usually means the average rental is fine, but the unhappy cases are sharp and memorable. So I would not book this brand casually and improvise at the desk. I would book it only after reading the payment, pickup and coverage rules properly.

The fine print I’d tell a friend to read twice

• You need a real credit card at pickup. The main driver must present a valid credit card in their own name. Let’s Drive says cash and debit cards are not accepted for the security deposit at pickup, even if the website accepted a debit card for the reservation payment.
• The deposit can be substantial. Under standard CDW, the stated excess/deposit hold is €800 for Mini/Economy/Cabrio, €1,000 for Compact/Intermediate, €1,200 for SUVs, €1,500 for Premium, and €1,700 for Minivans. MCDW lowers the excess, and SCDW can reduce it to €0, but the company still states a minimum blocked amount of €250 even with the strongest cover.
• Fuel is same-to-same, not automatically full-to-full. You return the car with the same fuel level it had when you picked it up. That matters because “same-to-same” is easier to misunderstand than a standard full tank policy.
• Age rules are not especially flexible. Minimum age is 21. A young driver fee of €10/day applies up to age 23, and a senior driver fee of €10/day applies from 74 to 78.
• You need the right documents. The licence must be at least one year old. Non-EU renters need an IDP plus their national licence, and the company also requires passport/ID and the payment card.
• Ferries and borders are not casual add-ons. You may not take the car outside Greece, onto a boat/ferry without written permission, or onto unpaved/off-road routes. This is one of the most important rules if you are planning island hopping.
• Cancellation penalties start earlier than some travelers expect. The company states free cancellation up to 48 hours before pickup, then fees of €55 or €70 as you get closer, with no-show scenarios including failure to present the required credit card.

Four smart booking moves before you commit

• Confirm the pickup method in writing, especially in Athens: terminal desk, meet-and-greet, or shuttle. Do not assume.
• Check your credit limit before travel, not at the counter. A valid card is not enough if it cannot absorb the hold.
• Ask for ferry permission before paying, not after. If your route depends on a boat, this is not a detail to sort out on the day.
• Photograph every panel, wheel, glass area and the fuel gauge at pickup and return. The review trail gives me no reason to skip that step.

My verdict: who Let’s Drive is best for

Let’s Drive is best for travelers who want a genuinely Greek network, sensible rates, and useful pickup points across airports, ports and islands. I’d look at it seriously for Crete, for port-linked itineraries, and for travelers who want more than just the usual anonymous airport economy car. The fleet breadth and national coverage are real strengths.

I would be more cautious if you only carry a debit card, want a guaranteed polished in-terminal experience, plan to jump on ferries without prior approval, or hate the idea of any ambiguity around pickup instructions or deposit rules. In those cases, a bigger international chain may be the lower-stress choice even if it costs more.

Would I rent from Let’s Drive? Yes, for the right trip and with my eyes open. I would not book it blindly for the absolute cheapest headline rate. I would book it when the location network fits my route, the credit-card rules are no problem, and I’ve verified exactly how pickup will work.

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