Accor Diamond? Get a free 72-hour weekend car rental from Europcar
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Accor Live Limitless has an interesting perk for its top-tier Diamond members.
You can get a free 72-hour weekend car rental from Europcar, plus a decent discount on other rentals.
Since Europcar broke up with Nectar, there are few other real options for getting any sort of earning or spending benefit with a travel partner. You can earn a flat 500 Avios per Europcar rental by crediting them to a Qatar Privilege Club account and then transferring them across to a BA account.
Accor and Europcar have a useful partnership
It is surprisingly hard to find decent discount codes for Europcar, mainly because it doesn’t have a lot of airline and hotel partners compared to Hertz and Avis.
Accor Live Limitless offers decent discounts at Europcar, except for US and Canada rentals, which increase if you have status:
- 10% discount for ALL Classic members
- 15% discount for ALL Silver and Gold members
- 20% discount for ALL Platinum and higher members
Note that Classic status is what you get for signing up to the Accor programme. It basically means that everyone can get a 10% Europcar discount if they bother to join Accor Live Limitless.
The discounts above are genuine – I saved £70 on a rental in Scotland last year using my Accor Diamond status.
You also earn Accor points when you rent at the rate of 3 points for every €1 spent.
As 1 Accor point = 2 Eurocents off your next Accor hotel booking, you are getting a return of 6%.
If you are Accor Diamond, you get an extra bonus
If you have Diamond status in Accor Live Limitless, you get Privilege Elite VIP status in the Europcar Privilege scheme.
This is top tier status, usually requiring 40 rentals.
What was impressive is that the status upgrade is processed immediately when you join Privilege. Europcar clearly has a way of accessing your Accor Live Limitless status from your Accor account number.
You can see the full benefits of being Privilege Elite VIP on the Europcar website here.
The benefits of Elite VIP are OK – double upgrade (when available), a free additional driver, €30 coupon after four rentals and free standard Priority Pass airport lounge membership. This is the version of Priority Pass which comes with one free lounge visit but charges you £20 for subsequent visits.
You also receive a voucher for a free 72-hour weekend rental, valid for 12 months.
Europcar dishes these vouchers out at any excuse, to be honest. Everyone gets one after their 3rd rental in any calendar year and everyone gets one when they get promoted to a new status tier. However, getting one for doing no rentals at all is clearly a better deal.
Conclusion
If you are a member of Accor Live Limitless status (and joining is free) it is worth bearing Europcar in mind next time you are renting a car, unless it is in the US or Canada.
Even ‘no status’ members of Accor Live Limitless who have just signed up get 10% off their rentals.
If you have Diamond status in Accor Live Limitless, you should also claim your free Elite VIP status in Europcar Privilege and bank your free weekend rental voucher.
You can learn more about the Europcar / Accor partnership on the Europcar website here and on the Accor Hotels site here.
Accor Live Limitless update – April 2024:
Earn bonus Accor points: Accor is not currently running a global promotion
New to Accor Live Limitless? Read our review of Accor Live Limitless here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our analysis of what Accor Live Limitless points are worth is here.
Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from Accor and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.
