Iberia drops Avios from Hertz and Europcar – where do you credit now?

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I published a long article in August about earning Avios from car rentals. Whilst British Airways works exclusively with Avis, Iberia Plus has deals with pretty much everyone. You simply had to credit your rentals to Iberia and then move your Avios across to BA via ‘Combine My Avios’.

No longer.

Iberia Plus has announced that Hertz and Europcar will cease to be partners on November 1st.

With Hertz, the announcement says that you will continue earning for rentals booked by October 31st but taken up to the end of the year.

With Europcar, it seems harsher. The website says that you cannot earn Avios points after November 1st, full stop. This implies that if you have already booked for a later date, you won’t be receiving anything.

(The Iberia website is, yet again, faulty at the time of writing and it will not let me link to the Hertz and Europcar pages. Hence no direct links! I assume it will fix itself again soon ….)

There is now no way of earning Avios points from Hertz or Europcar. Iberia Plus DOES continue to be a Sixt and Euromaster partner.

Where should you credit Hertz rentals now?

One option is to focus on the Hertz Gold Plus Rewards scheme. I outlined how it works in this article. It is worth a look if you are likely to redeem for free rentals but the conversion rate into airline miles or hotel schemes is poor.

Virgin Atlantic is probably your best bet. You will earn 1,100 Virgin miles per rental from Hertz. There are many other airline options as well.

Don’t forget that you can also credit Hertz rentals to two hotel schemes. The earning rates are not great but if you don’t have any airline accounts apart from Avios then it is better than nothing.

Your hotel partner options are Marriott Rewards and IHG Rewards Club.

Hilton HHonors, Club Carlson and Starwood also have tie-ups with car rental groups, but not Hertz.

Europcar is a partner with Hilton HHonors if you are looking for a home for future rentals with them.

It is a shame to see another of the British Airways Executive Club and Iberia Plus arbitrage opportunities taken away. You still earn more Avios from Hilton HHonors and Le Club Accorhotels if you credit to Iberia, and you can still get Avios from Sixt and Euromaster via Iberia Plus.

Category

Hertz and Gold Plus Rewards, Iberia and Iberia Plus

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Richie says:

7 Oct7 October 07:10

I use the hearts own scheme. I got to gold level, after 7 then president level after 20 rentals. I got a huge amount of points as last year my company hired me a 4×4 estate for 12 weeks.
Have never made a redemption booking yet, but I can say when you get to gold and president they do look after you with nice cars etc.
- Alan says:
  
  7 Oct7 October 08:13
  
  I use Hertz’s scheme too and find it pretty good. The occasional one week rental during a bonus points promo and the odd number of points received through compensation has given me a reasonable balance for redemption. Weekend rentals in the US and Australasia are pretty good value and on my last one the combo of a redemption and the 4h grace period caused such IT issues they didn’t charge me the taxes at all initially, then a month later charged too much, then just refunded the whole lot!
Roger Wilco says:

7 Oct7 October 08:02

I credit Hertz rentals to VS. 1100 miles convert to 1650 Hilton – a good deal.

@richie – you can get Hertz status even if you credit elsewhere. No rental points, obviously.
Ed says:

7 Oct7 October 08:47

Aww, this is irritating, I specifically booked with Hertz (at an acceptable value premium) to credit a large rental to Iberia next year. I can credit to Virgin instead – and I do need to up that balance – but the amount of miles, and hence the value, is down by about three quarters.

I suppose they have no way of tracking it but it would have been nice to see them credit existing bookings.
Metatone says:

7 Oct7 October 09:45

I suspect we’re in for a wave of equalisation between Iberia and BA Avios opportunities.
Feels like IAG are tightening up.
On the plus side, I’ve heard rumours that the shareholder discount is back on the agenda for IAG holders.

Overall though, when you look at the Avios offers in the USA, we get very meagre fare here.
- Rob says:
  
  7 Oct7 October 10:16
  
  It is 3 years since Avios was launched, I am surprised the Hilton and Accor conversion variances have survived. There were a lot more in the early days of Avios. There are still differences in, for example, the hotel chains which gives Avios in IB and BAEC as well as differences in which airlines you can redeem with. BA has Aer Lingus and Alaska exclusively, Iberia has Royal Air Maroc and a few more.
SJC says:

7 Oct7 October 09:57

I found that Iberia points seldom ever posted anyway. It never seeed to matter if a CPD was used or not, it was a one way rental or return to origin. Retrospective claims were always required and 9 out of 10 times the automated email response would be it was an ineligible rental.
- JQ says:
  
  7 Oct7 October 18:32
  
  Well I’ve only done 2 Hertz and I got Avios for 1, the other gave me Hertz points even though I said I wanted Avios and then gave up chasing
Peter says:

7 Oct7 October 21:06

Just finished a 5 day rental with Hertz via Iberia. (Well I say “via” but the link was not there so went direct and used codes on Iberia website).
Even though I have no status with them they gave me an upgrade to diesel and were so easy to deal with. Got 10% off courtesy of Iberia as well and they should hopefully give me 4500 avios but from the above I will not be holding my breath just yet while waiting for it…
Peter says:

7 Oct7 October 21:08

A bit off topic. Just had my 8000 Avios post to Iberia from taking out the Economist last month. No hassle or chasing required.
Globetrotter7 says:

8 Oct8 October 21:16

Has anyone rented a car recently during the triple Avios offer and received the correct number of Avios? For my 3 day rental at the end of Sept, I relieved (quite promptly) 900 Avios instead of 2700. I’ve sent Iberia 2 emails already but have had no reply… Arrghh!