Sixt is a Finalist for Best Car Rental Company at the
2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and it arrives as the category's premium provocateur: the Bavarian family firm that decided rental cars need not be penance. The proposition starts with the fleet — famously weighted towards BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi metal that turns the airport pick-up into the best part of the trip — and extends through a digital experience the industry has spent a decade chasing: an app that handles booking, upgrades, extensions and unlocking with genuine slickness, and pricing that flexes transparently rather than mysteriously.
The international architecture suits working itineraries. From its vast German heartland, Sixt's network now spans more than a hundred countries, with flagship airport stations across Europe, the Gulf and an aggressively expanding North American footprint — meaning the same profile, preferences and corporate rates follow a traveller from Manchester to Munich to Miami. The UK operation concentrates on the airports and cities where premium demand lives, and the brand's counters have a reputation for pace: documents checked, keys handed, gone.
Business products run deeper than the shine suggests. Corporate programmes deliver negotiated rates, central billing and policy guardrails; SIXT+ subscriptions and flexible month-to-month products answer the project economy's awkward middle durations that neither daily rental nor leasing serves well; and the ride-hailing and transfer arms extend the account into chauffeured mobility for the meetings that warrant it. Electrified options thread through the fleet, and the famously cheeky marketing conceals a very German operational discipline underneath. Fleet turnover keeps the cars young and the specification current — heated seats and driver aids as standard equipment rather than lottery wins — which frequent renters quietly price into every comparison.
Travelling for Business hears a consistent verdict from frequent renters: Sixt is the hire they choose when the choice is theirs. The nomination recognises the company that made rental aspirational without letting the substance slip — proof that this category can, occasionally, be fun. More than a century of family stewardship suggests the flair is structural, not seasonal.
Winners will be announced at the 2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and Sixt would naturally prefer to drive there in something orange and rapid.
