The international airport in Mauritius – Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport. Distances in Mauritius are short, but the airport is located in the southeast, near the city of Mahébourg, and most of the island’s popular resorts are on the west and northwest coast. Therefore, a reasonable question arises: how to get from Mauritius airport to the hotel where you will be staying? The answer is this: there are four ways to get from the airport to the coast: by bus, by taxi, by rented car and transfer. I will talk about the nuances in more detail below.
Mauritius main airport, check-in hall
Taxi transfer from Mauritius airport to hotel on the coast
Transfer is the most convenient way to get from Mauritius airport to the hotel. You are met at the airport in the arrivals area and taken by car to the hotel.
There is no Uber in Mauritius so it is better to prebook your taxi transfer from the airport to hotel.
Transfer from Mauritius Airport to the hotel can be booked on several sites:
- Kiwitaxi offers the best prices for a taxi from Mauritius Airport. Compared to the offer of the hotel, my trip from the airport to the hotel was 15€ cheaper. You can cancel the transfer for free even on the day of the transfer. When ordering, you can choose options such as a child car seat. The only negative is that there are no transfers to hotels on the east coast of the island (Blue Bay, Mahébourg) on the site. View prices →
The voucher that Kiwi Taxi sends after ordering a transfer on the site
- GetTransfer offers an inexpensive and at the same time comfortable transfer. On the site, you can choose your destination and the type of car that will be waiting for you at the time of your arrival – from an economy option for 4 seats and 3 luggage places to a minibus for the whole company. If necessary, you can order a child seat. Your driver will be waiting for you at the arrival hall of the airport holding a signboard with your name. Show prices →
I booked my transfer on this site from the airport to the hotel near the airport, in the Mahébourg area. The driver was waiting for me at the airport with a sign with my name on it.
An example of the approximate cost of a taxi from Mauritius airport to Flic-en-Flac beach is 17 €. In fact, the price will be a little higher – about 25€.
Bus from Mauritius Airport
Due to low prices and a well-established bus network, the bus in Mauritius is a fairly popular transport. There is a bus stop near the airport under Header SSR International Airport, and bus number 198 leaves from here every 15 minutes. Its opening hours are 06:15 on weekdays and Saturdays, 07:30 on Sundays and holidays. The last bus leaves at 18:45 from Monday to Friday and at 18:30 on Saturday, Sunday and public holidays.
Unfortunately, you can only get from the airport by bus number 198 to Port Louis, and almost all routes to the popular resorts of Mauritius (Grand Bay, Flic-en-Flac, Trou aux Biches, Mont Choisy) run through it. Without a stop in Port Louis, you can get to Le Morne beach and Belle Mare using buses number 9 or number 10, but this will require at least two transfers. You can check your route using Mauritius Buses online service or the app Mauritius Bus Routes.
The need to travel with transfers is not the only reason why the bus is hardly the best way to get to a hotel in Mauritius, even despite its inexpensiveness. Firstly, you still have to think about how to get from the bus stop to your accommodation, secondly, the buses have a luggage limit, and this can be a significant problem, and thirdly, the bus travels very slowly and with stops, which means that the journey will take two hours and more.
This is what a Shared Bus looks like
There are inexpensive direct transfers from the airport to the hotel on the so-called Shared Bus. You need to book a seat on this bus in advance online at viator website. The transfer price starts from 21€ and it offers very comfortable travel conditions. You come to the zone reserved for tour operators (it is located immediately after the security checkpoint), and there you present an electronic ticket – it is advisable to print it, but you can also show it on your phone. Then you are directed to the bus, where you are waiting for the rest of the fellow travelers. The bus is air conditioned, and each passenger is provided with a bottle of water. When loading on the bus is finished, it sets out on a route that will allow all passengers to reach their respective destinations.
Taxi from the airport to the hotel
On the ground floor of the airport building there is an Airport Taxi Service area, where you can actually take a taxi to your desired destination. Taxi prices in Mauritius are quite high, and especially at the airport – taxi drivers charge a separate fee for luggage. The road to the distant resorts of the island can cost you a pretty penny – 2 thousand Mauritian rupees (40.13 €.) and more. On average, the price will fluctuate between 1300 and 1500 rupees (26.09 – 30.10 €).
A separate problem with this method of leaving Mauritius airport may be a late flight. At night (from about 8 pm to 5 am), the cost of taxi services almost doubles, and free cars are not always on duty here. It may well happen that you will simply have nothing to leave here with.
Renting a car at the airport
If you are over 23 years old, if you have more than a year of driving experience, and if you have an international driver’s license that expires in a not less than a year, you can rent a car and drive from the airport at your own pace. In this article, I talked about my experience of renting in Mauritius.
Prices per day of rental start from 30€ to ~250€ depending on the car model. If you plan to rent a car, it is more profitable to take one immediately at the airport.
I’m in line at the AVIS counter
There are two ways to do this – book in advance online or at the airport by finding a counter of one of the rental companies. At Mauritius Airport there are counters of Hertz, Avis, Europcar, ADA Location De Vehicules, ABC Car Rental, First Car Rental, SIXT and some others. All of them also make it possible to order a car rental online for the dates you need, indicating the point of return. I have had experience renting a car from Avis and from Europcar. I liked the first one much better.
If you don’t want to bother with car rental upon arrival, and in my experience, often there is simply no car for you there, because someone booked it in advance, then I advise you to choose and book a car on one of the aggregator sites. Moreover, it is better to book at least a month in advance, and not at the last moment. I use these sites:
- Economybookings is traditionally the site where you will find the cheapest car.
- Localrent – I trust this site more and take a car on my travels on it more often.
When renting a car in Mauritius at the airport through one of the sites, you can rent a car somewhere on the coast. It is not necessary to return it to the airport. But the most economical option is to take a car at the airport and return it to the airport just before departure.
Hello!
My name is Tatiana, and I am glad to see you in my Mauritius travel guide.
For more than 12 years I have been traveling and creating travel guides to different countries. For the first time I got to Mauritius in 2018. I got inspired by the island so much that I decided to create this guide.
I personally visited all the places described on this site. Photos and texts are also taken and written by me. I update articles regularly to keep them up to date.
I hope you’ll forgive any errors or awkward phrasing, as I am not a native English speaker.
- Find the best flight to Mauritius – Trip.com.
- Score a sweet deal on a hotel – Booking.com
- Hire a car – Localrent.
- Book a taxi from / to the airport – GetTransfer or KiwiTaxi.
- Find interesting or unique tours & activities – GetYourGuide.