Members of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program are now able to redeem their points for rental cars in Australia and New Zealand. The new facility to redeem Qantas points for car hire is available for rentals from partners Avis or Budget made online at Qantas.com.
The ability to redeem points for other rental companies, such as Hertz or Thrifty, is not available – you will still need to pay through the existing methods, such as cash or credit card.
In addition to renting the cars through redeeming points, points will be earned on the actual car rental as well. For a rental in Australia, this will be calculated at the standard rate of 3 Qantas Points per dollar of the daily rental charge.
Note that when looking at quotes on the Qantas site, the prices are for the fully inclusive price. On top of the base rental charge, there are a series of fees and charges added on. From a Qantas Point earnings perspective, the earn is based on the base rental amount – not in the various administrative charges and taxes added on top.
Value of Points
The following example will give an idea of the value that are placed on Qantas Points for this style of redemption.
For a one day rental, in June, the Qantas website offered the following cash prices for some examples rentals
At the top right of the image, there is a checkbox to allow the display of the rentals using points. If you click the View In Points checkbox, the display will convert the dollar based price to a points cost. In this case, $46.75 has become 7,250 points, while the $47.99 option has become 7,500 points.
Based on these examples, a point has an approximate valuation of 0.64 of a cent.
How does the redemption value compare?
While Qantas Points have no official monetary value, it is possible to deduce a value for various redemptions options. There are a number of other options available for redeeming points, such as through flight and upgrade redemptions, the Qantas Shop, or for Points + Pay tickets.
While an exhaustive analysis is beyond the scope of this post, a quick look suggests some of the following redemption rates
Qantas Store Gift Voucher – 0.71 cents per point
Point + Pay – 0.78 cents per point
Small Appliances – 0.40-0.50 cents per point (based on retail price of the appliance)
Based on this, brief analysis, the redemption rate is not as good as can be achieved with some options available in the store. Having said that, the ability to redeem for a rental car may be useful in certain circumstances.