In all the chaos surrounding my travel, I didn’t notice until today that the client-specified car rental company (Avis, whose primary market appears to be biz travelers whose choices are made by beancounters — the cars are shappy, ill-maintained, poorly cleaned, and drastically less well kitted out than National or Hertz — but they’re cheap) doesn’t even have an affinity program.

Instead, they will give you points elsewhere, which is generally a sucky alternative. Still, I’ve got 10 rentals with ’em (and counting), so I needed to see SOME credits. The deals relevant to me are:

• Continental Airlines. CO will give me 50 miles for every day I rent with Avis, or about 150 miles for each rental. To redeem those for a ticket (worth, say, $350), I need 25,000 miles. 150 miles is 0.6% of a free trip’s 25,000 miles, so it’s 0.6% of that $350. That means the CO reward is worth about $2.10.
• Hyatt will give me 300 points for every rental. A free Hyatt night (say, $150) is 20,000 points. 300 is 1.5% of the award, so it’s 1.5% of the value or $2.25. That’s a little better than Continental, but still nothing to write home about.
• Southwest will give me 0.5 credits for every rental. A free SWA ticket requires 16 credits, so the Avis award is 3.13% of an award that’s worth, like Continental, about $350 — or a whopping $10.94.

Given Southwest’s generally customer-friendly POV compared to other airlines, it’s not surprising that they beat CO all to hell here. Hotels just aren’t quite as sophisticated with affinity programs as airlines, so I guess that explains Hyatt’s poor showing.

Mmmm, arithmetic.