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Update 12/17/21: More accounts appear to now be targeted with this offer (and others), so if you were looking for this Airbnb offer before but didn’t see it, you may want to check your Amex Offers again.
There’s a new Airbnb Amex Offer out today which is giving 5,000 bonus Membership Rewards when spending $250 on an Airbnb stay.
The Deal
- Spend $250+ in a single transaction at Airbnb & get 5,000 bonus Membership Rewards with an Amex Offer.
Key Terms
- Expires December 30, 2021.
- Offer valid via US website only at airbnb.com or via Airbnb merchant mobile app.
- Purchases must be made in US Dollars.
- Offer only valid on all bookings made via Airbnb.
- Offer not valid for lodging stays that are paid for before the promotion start date or after the promotion end date.
Quick Thoughts
This is an excellent offer if you have it on any of your Membership Rewards-earning cards because it’s not often possible to save or earn significant amounts when paying for Airbnb stays. You can usually buy their gift cards at a 10% discount, but this Airbnb Amex Offer can be like saving 20% or more depending on how you value Membership Rewards.
The offer expires the day before New Years Eve, but one of the nice things about Airbnb in this respect is that it’s much easier to book a stay for after the offer expires to lock in the 5,000 points than it would be for a similar type of Amex Offer for a hotel chain. That’s because with hotel stays you’ll often not be charged until checkout, whereas Airbnb charges up-front and so you can book now even if you’re not staying until 2022.
If you need to book a $500+ stay where you’ll be checking in by December 30, 2021, it should be possible to earn the bonus on two cards if you have a P2 with the offer too. Airbnb lets you pay in full upfront, or pay 50% now and 50% when you stay. You could pay the first half with one card, then change the payment method for the second payment to a different Amex card with the offer loaded to it.
As always when booking an Airbnb stay, click through from their partnership with Delta or British Airways to earn bonus miles on your stay.
In case you were hoping you could buy a $250 Airbnb gift card to lock in the bonus points, it’s looking unlikely that’ll work. Airbnb doesn’t process gift card purchases directly, instead using LaunchGiftCards.com to do that for them. Having said that, DoorDash uses the same company to sell their gift cards and gift card purchases had worked to trigger Cash App Boosts for DoorDash in the past.
I therefore decided to be a guinea pig and bought a $250 gift card. I figured that the worst case scenario is that we earn 5x Membership Rewards on the purchase (I loaded it to a card with a +4 offer on it). We spend 60-100 nights in Airbnbs each year, so we won’t have any problem making use of the gift card for personal use. The best case scenario though is that we’ll earn 5x Membership Rewards as well as 5,000 bonus points for a total of 6,250 points – a fantastic haul for Airbnb.
I made this purchase a couple of hours ago but haven’t had an email from Amex confirming that I’ve redeemed the offer. While that email isn’t always sent by Amex even when an Amex Offer is successfully redeemed, I think it’s unlikely that it’s going to track. I’ll update and republish this post in the future if we do end up receiving the bonus points though.
Update 12/15/21: We’ve not received a statement credit for buying a gift card, so I doubt it’ll be appearing in the future.
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I was wondering about buying a gift card on the capone x to trigger the $200 statement credit being offered now. Do you think this would have the same issue?
I’d assume you’d have the same issue, but I don’t know for sure.
Another offer to compare it to is Chase Pay Yourself Back, since until March Sapphire Reserve cardholders can redeem their UR at 1.5x for an ABnB stay –i.e., 20000 MR gets you a $300 stay.
The math would work like this: someone who starts the day with $300 and 20000 UR, and charges a $300 stay on the Amex, will end up with $0 cash, keep the original 20000 UR, and earn 5300 MR. Someone who pays with Chase and pays himself back will end up with 900 MR (spending 20k points but earning back 300 x 3x for Sapphire Reserve travel), and keeping the original $300 cash.
If you value MR and UR about the same, then it boils down to whether you prefer 24,400 points (5300 MR + 19,100 UR) or $300 cash. In other words, the break-even is about 1.3 cents per point Use Chase if you value points less than that, Amex if you value them more.
Since the 5k bonus is fixed, the break-even point leans more towards using Chase points (approaching 1.5 cents per point) the more expensive the stay. It leans heavily towards charging on Amex (1 cent per point) if you carry the Sapphire Preferred rather than Reserve. (Or if you are able to charge exactly $250 on Amex and the rest on Chase, do that.)
Sorry for the long math-y post but it’s late and I had too much coffee today.
Interesting and made me get another cup of coffee to wake up and read and diagram out, then I realized I don’t have the Reserve (only the Preferred) so I will probably keep it simple and just use my Amex. Thanks for making my brain work though.
Did you get the credit yet?
Unfortunately not – it doesn’t look like it’ll be getting credited.
Sad it doesn’t work on gift cards. I mostly use airbnb overseas (I generally find US properties to be overpriced compared to lodging alternatives, including hotel point stays), but my overseas travel is still quite limited due to the pandemic. It’s hard to find a 20% discount on airbnb, so this offer is good. I’d rather bank it for later, but I will look at my early 2022 USA travel and see if it might make sense for me to book a reservation.
So: did you get the MR for the AirBnB gift card?
I only bought it a couple of days ago, so it’s too early to know right now.
Any insight on how these are made available to card members? This is not on my offer list
Amex Offers are often targeted, so there’s not really anything you can do to get this offer unfortunately other than making sure you have at least one Amex card earning Membership Rewards.
They sometimes roll out offers to other people a week or two after it first appears, so keep an eye out for it in case you get targeted later this month.
[…] to a different site when purchasing gift cards on airbnb.com. If you have this offer on two cards, Frequentmiler has a cool tip to pay 50% upfront and switch the other 50% afterward to a different card, thus […]
Use caution with AIRBNB gift cards. You cannot use them on any reservation you’ve already made a payment on with a different method (such as credit card).
I had about $100 remaining on an AIRBNB booking last summer & bought a gift card at the grocery store using my Amex Platinum 10x.
Although there is an option in the payment dialogue to switch your method of payment, it prevents you from switching to a gift card. I would assume that if your initial payment is made with a gift card, you can switch to a credit card for any further payments but I have not tried.