At Avis we like to keep car hire easy and simple. So we are excited to introduce our NEW iPhone application which will enable you to book your Avis car rental on the move.

We have based the Avis iPhone application development around speed, simplicity and ease.

Your booking can be made in just 2 minutes and all you need to do is:

• Select your location, dates and vehicle group.
• Enter personal details.
• Accept terms and conditions.
• Then confirm.

This fast and simple booking process has a few time saving functions:

• 3 way location search
• Easy to use date selector
• Google maps function for accurate directions
• Full selection of Avis fleet quick and easy to select
• Pre-saved details (personal details only needed for the first booking)
• Reservation details saved on your phone for easy access
• Dedicated Avis contact detail if you require any support
• Location details including opening times

The application has been made to help improve user experience by making the booking process simpler and faster. So download it today and try it for yourself.

Download the Avis iPhone application
View a step by step booking process

Once you have downloaded the Avis iPhone application we would love to get your feedback.

We’ve been listening to your feedback about offering our Avis Home Delivery service in London and I am really excited to announce we will be rolling out the service to the West London area! We will be open for reservations from 1st July and some of the areas we will be delivering to include West Brompton, Chiswick, Fulham, Hammersmith, Kensington and Notting Hill to name a few.

For full information on Home Delivery or to book this service go to www.avis.co.uk/homedelivery (where you can use the postcode search to confirm we deliver to your area) or call our reservations team on 0844 581 8181.

It would be great to hear what you think about our expansion of this service into London.

I am pleased to announce that Avis UK has launched its “Home Delivery” service across the UK. Designed to make the car rental experience more convenient, Avis customers can now request for their rental car to be delivered directly to their home and for it to be collected again at the end of the car hire period.

Avis Home Delivery is ideal for customers that don’t really have the time to pick a hire car up, particularly when they don’t live near a station. It offers them a convenient service and at just £10 each way, it’s great value for money.   This time-saving product is available to UK households across the country* between 08:00 and 18:00, six days a week. 
For more details or to make a reservation visit www.avis.co.uk/homedelivery or call 0844 581 8181.

* Available across the country, with the exception of London

During the disruption caused by the Volcano ash last week, Avis implemented a number of initiatives to help stranded customers across Europe, we kept our rates flat during the period and made sure that our one-way fees were charged at the standard rate. We temporarily removed the cancelations charges for customer and implemented a number of tactical offers to help customers including the UK one-way special for £76.

Now the situation has passed and travel in Europe is back to normal, we have re-implemented our cancellation and non-cancellation charges, for more details on these charges read our previous blog post. As a result of the large number of one-way rentals across Europe, you can now find some good deals, for example France are currently offering a €1 euro rental for one-way, one day rentals from the North of France to the South, these are available to book on www.avis.co.uk and are only available till 30th April.

If you live in the city, chances are you don’t need a car all that often. So why waste money buying, taxing, parking and maintaining your own, when Avis Car Rental can provide the perfect vehicle whenever you need it for a fraction of the cost?

Avis car rental makes a lot of sense
With everything on your doorstep in the city, you simply don’t need a car all the time. City centre parking charges alone can be enough to encourage you to catch the bus or take the train. If you live in London, you’ll have the congestion charge to consider too. What’s more, in many city suburbs, local parking permits or garage hire can cost a packet, even if you leave your car at home. Hire a car with Avis and you’ll only pay when you need it, and have none of the hassle when you don’t.

Choose the right car
This can be a problem for the occasional user, with different trips making different demands. Collecting that antiques fair bargain isn’t easy in a sports car, but then a weekend in the country is no fun in a huge estate. By hiring from the extensive fleet at Avis, you can match a car to your plans, rather than always limiting what you do to fit your car. What’s more, you’ll always be driving the latest models with low mileage and in the best possible condition. Avis does all the repairs and servicing and pays all the tax and insurance of its fleet so no worries about reliability and no maintenance costs. Not having to waste part of your weekend car washing and cleaning is also a bonus.

Treating yourself is simple as Avis Prestige has depots in London, Heathrow and Manchester. Why not take the chance to enjoy the high life, driving cars you may never normally afford, from a Mercedes SLK to an exclusive Maserati Quattroporte. Enjoy a weekend away and impress your friends and family by taking the wheel of a top of the range supercar.

Make it easy on yourself
If you don’t own a car, hiring an Avis car is easy with delivery to your door. If you want to pick up, there are branches all over the UK and plenty across the capital, all easily accessed via the London Underground. You can even arrange one way car hire for added flexibility.

Avis makes you feel the car is your own, with all the extras you’d enjoy such as air conditioning. You can hire baby and child seats to make sure everyone stays safe, and even add an extra driver to share the miles on longer trips. Whatever your plans, Avis Car Hire can put the perfect package together for you.

When you consider the advantages of Avis car rental, and the savings you can make by not owning a car that you rarely drive, you can see why more and more people, who live and work in cities across the UK, are turning to car rental.

Have you ever been in that situation where you’ve been to an offer page , seen a banner advertising that “incredible discount”, but when it came to book you couldn’t get the right price?

This is what happened to one of our customer, who despite booking a car during the Avis New Year Sale period, she’d seen advertised on our email newsletter, was unable to get the advertised car hire discount. I thought it would be useful to share her experience & attempt to clarify how these promotions work, so next time you don’t miss out on the chance to get the best price for your car hire.

Most of Avis’s discounts are driven by a promotional code which we embed on our offer/sale promotional pages, newsletter links and internal and external banners. When a customer visits one of these landing pages or clicks from one of the links or banners, then proceeds to book, the discount is automatically applied to the price.

If however the visitor sees the banner or the newsletter advertising a specific discount but instead of following the promotional link or banner, goes straight to the booking engine on the Avis home page, the code is not activated and therefore the discount is not applied.

This is always specified in the landing pages, but following the customer’s comment we will make sure to have it even more prominent.

Of course all promotions are subject to availability and to specific terms and conditions which are always state at the bottom of our landing pages, so make sure you read carefully.

Hope this helps! But if you have any other questions please let us know or visit our FAQs page.

As we all know business can be unpredictable and sometimes it’s hard to envisage what your future needs will be. That’s why we have developed Avis Flex; our new, fully flexible solution for corporate long-term car rental. This provides your business with a great fixed daily rental price and the only commitment from you to us will be to keep the car for a minimum of 28 days. Plus the longer you keep the car the lower the daily price.

Flexibility and price aren’t the only reasons to get long-term car rental from Avis. We also promise you will also benefit from:

• No Deposit Required
• Free 2,000 Miles on your car, every month you rent
• Flexible terms & conditions with no complicated contracts
• Free Collision Damage Weaver Insurance
• Delivery and Collection service to your home or business
• Free 24 Hour Roadside Assistance

For more information on Car Rental and Leasing click here

We are currently only offering Avis Flex to our corporate customers, but we would love to get your feedback and opinions on this product.

I am excited to announce the launch of the Avis Eco Collection, our new low emissions car group. If you choose to rent a car from the Avis Eco collection you can drive away in a brand new, stylish and fuel efficient VW Golf 1.6 TDI 90ps. The cars combined MPG is 62.8 and its CO2 emissions are sub 120, at 118g/km. Currently these cars are available at 21 Avis locations across the UK.

Also to celebrate the launch of the new Avis Eco collection, we will offset the carbon offset all of the Eco collection rentals that have pick-ups in December 2009 and January 2010.

We would love to hear what you think about this new car group and it would be great to get feedback if you have rented one of our Avis Eco cars.

Avis are pleased to announce that we now offer our customers the opportunity to offset the carbon emissions from their car rental in the UK when they collect there keys. The cost to offset the rental is £1, this has been calculated based on average vehicle emissions, length of rentals, mileage and age of vehicles. The money raised will be allocated by our partner, The CarbonNeutral Company.

To celebrate the launch for every customer who chooses to offset the carbon on their rental in December 2009 and January 2010, Avis will match the total amount collected.

We would also like our customers to choose which project they want us to invest the carbon offset fund in. We have selected three potential projects, now all we need is for you to vote in our blog poll for one of the following:

Candelaria Hydro Power Project – Guatemala
The project involves the generation of renewable energy through the installation of a run-of-river hydropower plant in Guatemala. The project generated emission reductions of approximately 14,500 CO2 equivalent in 2006, verified and certified to the Voluntary Carbon Standard.

Damao Wind Power Project – China
This project generates clean energy from 40 new wind turbines in China. The total emissions reductions are estimated to be 100,000 tCO2 equivalent, verified to the Gold Standard (GS).

Vehicles for Change
In the Vehicles for Change portfolio, the verifiable emission reductions are generated by a coalmine methane capture project in Germany, which is combined with an initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina producing bio-diesel from waste cooking oil to be used as cleaner fuel for public buses. If successful, the Bosnian project will demonstrate the financial and practical viability of bio-diesel as a cleaner fuel source, paving the way to sustainable development in a nation adversely affected by war.

Have your vote now!

There is always lots of talk around the office about what cars we might potentially get on fleet, which cars we would like to see and what we think our customers would like to drive. Following on from Robert’s blog post on the Frankfurt Motor Show and news of our exclusivity on the Porsche Panamera in Germany, I was inspired to take a look at some of the other desirable cars available with Avis.

The focus of my attention starts in the US where they have a range of cars, similar to our own Select Series fleet – Cool Cars. Immediately, the selection of cars available in the range had me dreaming of picking up a Chevrolet Camaro (my personal favourite from the range!) at Los Angeles and cruising along the highways to the Grand Canyon to admire the awesome views.

Although, as the Cool Cars range is available throughout the States, from California, to Florida to Texas to Chicago, to name just a few, I could happily spend a few months travelling across the country taking in all the US has to offer, picking up a different car every week!

Alongside the Camaro (which is exclusive to Avis), you could also choose from the Ford Mustang or Chevy Corvette, both modern versions of the traditional ‘muscle cars’ I’ve admired and longed to drive since my youth. The Cool Cars fleet also boasts a handful of urban cruisers in the Cadillac CTS & STS, convertibles (Pontiac Solstice, Nissan 350Z convertible) for the poseurs amongst you and the inevitable ‘gas-guzzling’ SUVs such as the Hummer H3.

But fear not, there is also the Eco-Ride selection for those renters conscious about their carbon footprint. The Eco-Ride cars are either hybrids or have been SmartWay certified by the US Environment Protection Agency as being environmentally cleaner and more fuel efficient vehicles.

Whilst I try to convince my wife that taking the kids stateside to cruise the highways in a muscle car is a great idea for next years holiday, why not share what your ideal Cool Car fleet would look like!