Cookie Policy

General Information

This cookie policy describes how we use cookies, tag management and similar technologies on our website and mobile apps.

This cookie policy was last updated on 17th December 2020.

Avis Budget Group, Inc. (and its group companies located in the European Union) (we, us, our) uses cookies, tag technology and similar technologies as described in this cookie policy.

Please review this cookie policy carefully. It describes our use of cookies, web beacons or bugs, tag technology, IP addresses and our use of other methods to collect and share data regarding the usage of our website, mobile sites and mobile apps. For details on our use of data collection methods, please see our Privacy Notice. Details of our use of cookies and similar technologies and how to control some of these are outlined below.

You can manage your cookie preferences here: change cookie preferences.

What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that is stored by your browser, and allows it to remember information between web pages and browser sessions. Avis uses a number of "first party" cookies - generated and used by the Avis website – and some "third party" cookies – generated on our site by third parties. They enable us to remember each part of your reservation as you go through the site, remember your customer details and display appropriate content based on your selected options and journey. They also help us to understand user behaviour within our website, which means we can make the experience better for you.

Cookies can only store text, which is generally anonymous and usually encrypted.

Cookies are secure – they can only store information that is put there by the browser, which is information the user has entered into the browser or that is included in the page request. They cannot run code and they cannot be used to access your computer. If a website encrypts the information in the cookie, only that website can read the information.

There are two different types of cookies: Session and Persistent. They are used for different things and contain different information.

Session cookies contain information that is used within your current browser session. These cookies are automatically deleted when you close your browser. Nothing is persisted on your machine beyond the time you spend on the website.

Persistent cookies are used to hold information that is used between visits. This data allows websites to recognise that you are a returning customer and react accordingly. Persistent cookies have a lifetime value that is set by the website, which can vary between a few minutes or several years.

For additional information about cookies, please visit:

• www.allaboutcookies.org;
• www.youronlinechoices.eu; and
• https://www.cookielaw.org/media/1096/icc_uk_cookiesguide_revnov.pdf.

Tag Management

The Avis website also involves the use of tags. Tags are short pieces of code included in our website that direct the user's browser to obtain/capture information about that user, the website page or URL. This information may be used in relation to website functionality, optimisation, analytics, advertising or retargeting purposes. The use of tags on the Avis website involves the sharing of certain information about your device and your interactions with the Avis website with our third party partner(s).

Why use cookies and tags?

Cookies are used by the website to keep your session as you progress through the website, keeping track of your reservation details and whether you've logged in. They are used to display relevant products within your journey.

Web analytics cookies, including from our partners Google and Adobe, allow us to track customer interaction within the website. This gives us valuable insights which enable us to improve the website and the products and services we offer.

We also work with partners who will write third party cookies, tags and SDKs which are then used by advertisers on other websites to give you appropriate and relevant advertisements based on your browsing history as well as device identifiers, location information, application data and usage information and installation identifiers. These cookies, tags and SDKs generally do not store personal information enabling other sites to directly identify you, they are based purely on the browsing history and other log data. Certain of these technologies may collect your email address. But this information is only used to ensure that appropriate advertisements are presented on the basis that a device might belong to a person interested in specific content but advertisers do not know who the individual is that owns or is using that device.

Turning off and deleting cookies

You can change your cookie settings for the majority of cookies used on our website through our cookie preference centre. Details of the cookies that can be managed through our cookie preference centre are set out in the What do these cookies do? section below. You can amend these settings at any time and if you change the status of any of the categories of cookie to "off" then this category of cookies (or similar technologies) will no longer be deployed on your device.

Whilst our cookie preference centre manages the majority of cookies on our website, there are a small number of cookies that can only be managed using your browser settings.  Details are included in the What do these cookies do? section below.

All web browsers allow you to limit cookie behaviour or turn off cookies within the settings or options of the browser. The steps to do this are different for each browser, you can find instructions under the Help menu of your browser.

Through your browser you can also view the cookies that are on your computer, and delete individual ones, or purge them all.

Cookies are just text files so you can open them and read the contents. The data within them is often encrypted, or a numerical key corresponding to a web session so they often don't make sense to anything other than the website that wrote it.

If you turn off default cookies (those that are essential to the Avis website), the Avis website will not be able to create a reservation or remember your session and there will be issues with the functionality of the website.

Disabling other types of cookies will also affect the monitoring of your progress through the website, but will not stop the analytics code from recognising your visit.

Mobile Opt-out

If you access our mobile apps, you can enable a "do not track" feature so as to control interest-based advertising on an iOS or Android mobile device by selecting the Limit Add Tracking option in the privacy section of your Settings on iOS or via advertising preferences on Android devices (e.g. in Google Settings). This will not prevent the display of advertisements but will mean that they will no longer be personalised to your interests.

What cookies and tags does the Avis site use?

The session cookies that Avis writes include data used by the web server hardware about which server is processing your session, your authentication status (against the Avis customer database) and the details of your reservation.

The persistent cookies and tags that are created by the Avis website are used by our technology partners. They are used to recognise traffic to the site that is returning users rather than new customers. The information that is stored is used to serve you appropriate advertisements on other sites on our behalf. Deleting these cookies and tags or disabling these cookies and tags by changing the status of "Advertising and Retargeting" cookies and tags to "off" in our cookie preference centre won't affect your experience or the functionality of the Avis website.

Google DoubleClick

Avis uses Google DoubleClick: (a) to display Avis advertisements on other selected third party websites (within the Google DoubleClick partner network) based on criteria selected by Avis; and (b) to retarget Avis advertisements to users that have visited the Avis website.

Google DoubleClick uses information collected about users on the Avis website as well as collected from third party websites to provide these services to Avis, in particular to identify individuals to present Avis adverts to based on the criteria that Avis select. This includes using information collected by the Google DoubleClick cookie on the Avis website as described in the table above. Avis discloses information to Google through the Google DoubleClick cookie in order to undertake its marketing and promotional activities in an effective manner and undertaking analysis of advertisement success.

To opt out of the collection of personal information as part of the Google DoubleClick services (and personalisation across Google partner websites and google search) please visit: www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/opt-out.html. Further information on how Google use information can be found here https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

Social Media Advertisement Personalisation

Avis uses marketing tools made available by social media platforms (such as Facebook and Instagram) in order to: (a) select specific criteria that the social media platform will use to target a specific audience on that platform with Avis advertisements; and (b) retarget users that have visited the Avis website (e.g. if a booking has started but not been completed).

Social media platforms utilise information about their users in order to determine whether those users should be presented a specific advertising campaign based on criteria selected by the advertiser. This may include information collected through a pixel or similar technology placed on the Avis website (as described in the table above), provided by users to the social media platform (e.g. account information and usage of the social network), and information collected from third party websites that is shared with the social media platform.  This might include the social media network assessing whether its users are similar to existing Avis customers based on certain criteria or information that Avis provides to the social network.

Where Avis discloses personal data of users to the social media platform through a social media pixel on the Avis website, this is for the purposes of undertaking its marketing and promotional activities in an effective manner and undertaking analysis/reporting of advertisement success.

To opt-out of personalised advertisements on your social media account or newsfeed and for more information on how these social media platforms use your information, please visit:

• Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/privacy/explanation
• Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/519522125107875
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/en/privacy
• YouTube: https://policies.google.com/privacy

If you would like to control the use of information about you collected by Facebook from third party websites you can visit Facebook's 'Off-Facebook' privacy settings here: https://en-gb.facebook.com/off-facebook-activity.

Avis customer personal data

Avis reviews and assesses information about our existing customers in order to determine the type of person we would like to see our adverts when they are using the internet and to determine criteria for targeting future marketing and advertising campaigns (including those described in the "Google DoubleClick" and "Social Media Advertisement Personalisation" sections above.  

You can opt-out of this processing at any time. Please see the Your Rights and Choices section of the Privacy Notice for more information.

Other technologies

In addition to cookies, we use some other similar technologies as follows:

• Web Beacons: small graphic images included on our website or emails or those of third parties to provide analytics information;
• Social widgets: buttons or icons provided by third party social media networks which may collect browsing data and will be received by the third party and are controlled by the third party; and
• SDKs: these are mobile application third party software development kits used in our apps. They enable us to collect information about app activity and the device it runs on.

Changes to our Cookie Policy

This cookie policy may be updated from time to time. 

If we change anything important about this cookie policy we will notify you through a pop-up on the website for a reasonable length of time prior to and following the change. You may review the cookie policy by visiting our website and clicking on the Cookie Policy link.