NEW: Earn Avios from car rentals with Hertz, Europcar and SIXT via Qatar Airways

A month ago, Qatar Airways officially adopted Avios as its frequent flyer currency. Qmiles are no more.

You can now link your British Airways Executive Club account with your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account and move Avios back and forth at a 1:1 ratio. Our ‘how to’ guide to account linking is here.

If you think ‘so what?’ because you could already book Qatar Airways flights via British Airways Executive Club, you need to think again. A lot of new Avios earning options with partners are now available, as long as you open a Qatar Airways Privilege Club account.

In this article I want to look at how earning Avios from car rentals is now far easier than it was.

For many years now, the whole of the IAG airline group (primarily British Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus) has had an exclusive deal with Avis Budget.

This has generally worked well. There are some genuinely good additional benefits offered through this partnership, such as a free additional driver with Avis. You also earn Avios at a decent rate of 5 Avios per £1 spent.

Avis and Budget are often not an option, however, either due to price or to simply not having a depot or the availability you need at your destination.

This used to mean no Avios from your rental. This is no longer the case.

Qatar Airways Privilege Club has a wide range of Avios-earning car rental partners

If Avis or Budget are not convenient, what you need to do is:

• book with one of the car rental companies discussed below

• credit the rental to your Qatar Airways Privilege Club account

• move the Avios across to British Airways Executive Club

See here for details of the Qatar Airways car rental partners.

These are your options:

Avis

Yes, we know, Avis is a British Airways partner already. However, there is a little quirk. Avios earning via British Airways Executive Club is based on what you spend, at the rate of 5 Avios per £1.

With Qatar Airways you earn at a flat rate. For non-status members, this means 500 Avios per rental.

If you are spending under £100, and assuming that the BA and Qatar discount codes get you the same price from Avis, you might as well credit the rental to Privilege Club.

The Avis home page is here. The BA partnership site is here.

Budget

With Budget, there is an even bigger incentive to credit your rental to Qatar Airways Privilege Club and not Executive Club.

With BA, you will only earn 2 Avios per £1 you spend. Credit your rental to Qatar Airways Privilege Club and you will earn a flat 500 Avios.

Unless you are spending over £250, Qatar Airways Privilege Club is the most lucrative option.

The Budget home page is here. The BA partnership site is here.

Europcar

Europcar was not previously an Avios partner, although you could earn Nectar points – at a terrible rate – and convert them. We wrote this article on how you could earn points and miles in other loyalty schemes with Europcar.

You can now earn Avios with Europcar via Qatar Airways Privilege Club. You will earn 500 Avios on all rentals.

The Europcar website is here.

Hertz

Hertz is arguably ‘the big one’ in terms of opening up new ways of earning Avios from Qatar Airways Privilege Club.

As a Privilege Club member you receive:

• Up to 10% off Hertz car rental rates
• 500 Avios for standard rentals 
• 250 Avios for contract rentals 

Historically, we recommended crediting Hertz rentals to Virgin Flying Club. If you collect both Avios and Virgin Points, the Virgin route is still more generous as you receive 1,000 points per rental.

The Hertz website is here.

SIXT

You can earn 500 Avios for every SIXT rental when you credit it to Qatar Airways Privilege Club.

SIXT also has a partnership with Virgin Atlantic earning 500 Virgin Points per rental – see here.

The SIXT website is here.

Rentalcars.com

Finally, Qatar Airways Privilege Club has an interesting deal with Rentalcars.com. This is a consolidator, allowing you to book cars from every major rental company in virtually all major markets.

You need to book via the special link on the Qatar Airways website (click on ‘Car Rentals’ and then ‘Rentalcars.com’) which takes you to a dedicated co-branded booking page. You will receive 3 Avios in Privilege Club for every $1 you spend.

Concusion

The Avis Budget partnership with Avios has been very successful because it was well designed to offer genuine benefits to members.

That said, Avis Budget is not always the answer to your car rental problems. The new Avios deal with Qatar Airways Privilege Club means that you can now earn Avios from Europcar, Hertz and SIXT too.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.