Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Bits: earn Accor points or 3,000 Avios for 6+ day car hires, RwandAir launches Gatwick flights

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News in brief:

Europcar offering up to €60 or 3,000 Avios on rentals

We don’t cover Europcar much, although its £1 UK one-way rentals have proved very popular with Head for Points readers.

Whilst it doesn’t have many airline partnerships, it does have a deal with fellow French travel group Accor.

Until 30th June, you will earn 3,000 Avios or €60 of Accor hotel vouchers when you rent via Europcar for 8 days or more.  Rentals of 6-7 days earn a smaller bonus of 1,500 Avios or €30 of Accor vouchers.  Unfortunately US and Canada rentals are excluded.

Rentals must be booked AND completed by 30th June.

Full details of the offer are here on the Europcar website.

If you don’t know much about the Accor programme, let me clarify where the numbers above come from.  The Europcar deals gives you 1500 or 3000 Le Club AccorHotels points per rental.  Accor points can be redeemed for vouchers worth 2 Eurocents per point, so you get €30 or €60 of hotel vouchers.

Alternatively, if you tell Accor to send your points to Iberia Plus, they convert at 1 Avios point = 1 Accor point.  Do NOT send them to British Airways because they convert at a far poorer rate of 0.5 Avios points = 1 Accor point.

RwandAir launches services to London Gatwick

On Tuesday, RwandAir launched its brand new service between London Gatwick and Kigali.

This is a three-times weekly service, operated with an A330-200.  The flight time to Rwanda is 8 hours and 40 minutes.

It is a three class service offering Business, Premium Economy and Economy.  Business Class has fully flat beds.

Whilst RwandAir is not in any of the airline alliances, it does offer a new option to reach a part of the world which is not well served by direct flights from the UK.


best credit card to use when buying flights

How to maximise your miles when paying for flights (February 2025)

Some UK credit cards offer special bonuses when used for buying flights. If you spend a lot on airline tickets, using one of these cards could sharply increase the credit card points you earn.

Booking flights on any airline?

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold earns double points (2 Membership Rewards points per £1) when used to buy flights directly from an airline website.

The card comes with a sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points. These would convert to 20,000 Avios or various other airline or hotel programmes. The standard earning rate is 1 point per £1.

You can apply here.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

Buying flights on British Airways?

The British Airways Premium Plus American Express card earns double Avios (3 Avios per £1) when used at ba.com.

The card comes with a sign-up bonus of 30,000 Avios. The standard earning rate is 1.5 Avios per £1.

You do not earn bonus Avios if you pay for BA flights on the free British Airways American Express card or either of the Barclaycard Avios Mastercards.

You can apply here.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

Buying flights on Virgin Atlantic?

Both the free Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard and the annual fee Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard earn double Virgin Points when used at fly.virgin.com.

This means 1.5 Virgin Points per £1 on the free card and 3 Virgin Points per £1 on the paid card.

There is a sign-up bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points on the free card and 18,000 Virgin Points on the paid card.

You can apply for either of the cards here.

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Comments (39)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Erico1875 says:

    My son rents 2 transits on monthly rolling contract at very good rates from Europcar.
    I wonder what amount of points he should get for these hires ?

  • RussellH says:

    AIUI, you can turn your Accor points into vouchers, which you can use to pay at Accor hotels, But also IIRC, minimum spend, whether on vouchers or bookings is 2 000 points = €40,–

  • Planeflyer says:

    I was on the inaugural to Kigali (and had a slice of that cake!). I thought they were a pretty decent carrier. They’re no Singapore or Cathay, but a reasonable ride, and enough IFE to get you to Rwanda and back.

  • Vinvin says:

    Thanks guys. Just found an old article stating ereward transfers may reset the balance. Now trying to get them to reactivate my account with the hopes theres some loose points I could sling over. Hopefully it won’t take too long to reactivate and transfer across. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll try the book & cancel trick!

    • Vinvin says:

      *reset the expiry

    • EwanG says:

      In my experience transferring e-rewards to Accor *does* extend the validity of those Accor points

      • Rob says:

        Thanks. This comes up in my Accor article on Monday – wasn’t clear if it still worked.

      • Marc says:

        Europcar also extends validity in my experience. Points take a while to post though!

      • Alan says:

        How recently was your experience? I thought under the new rules you had to have a stay?

  • the real harry1 says:

    WEMISSYOU15 for £15 off EC

  • Sussex Bantam says:

    And…brilliantly..the link on the BA.com home page takes you to the complaint form regarding BOB. You then have to click another link to get to the disruption form which still asks you about travel insurance. What a farce.

  • Scallder says:

    BA crews have voted for more strikes…

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40138663

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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