The Offer
- American Express is offering a 25% bonus when you purchase AirBnB Giftcards using your Membership Rewards points (giving a value of 1.25¢ per point)
The Fine Print
- Valid until March 31st, 2015
- Can only redeem for $125 (10,000 points) or $313 (25,000 points)
- You can only use one gift card per booking
- You don’t need to use the full gift card for a single booking, if you use a higher value gift card then you’ll receive the remainder in the form of a new gift card within 4-5 days.
Our Verdict
The American Express/AirBnB partnership is still relatively new, I am hoping that they offer a co-branded credit card at some stage. Most people will get more value out of their Membership Rewards (MR) points than 1.25¢ per point by transferring the points to one of their travel partners, especially when you combine this when they are offering a transfer bonus of 40% (you can currently get this 40% bonus by transferring points to Avios).
I’m using AirBnB more and more for my travels, especially when I’m staying for a long period of time on travelling in a big group. I’ve also got a massive stockpile of MR points and I already have too many airline miles/hotel points so I am going to take advantage of this deal.
My only real complaint is that I wish they handled these gift cards a bit better, either let me apply the giftcards to my account and let me use the credit as I please or let me use more than one gift card at a time. The highest value gift card is only $313 and if I want to make a booking for a month (which I sometimes do if I am staying somewhere for awhile due to work) then I won’t really be able to use MR points for the whole stay. Because of that I’ll probably only be grabbing ~$600 in AirBnB gift cards.
If you haven’t used AirBnB before, consider using my referral link. You’ll get a $25Â credit towards your first stay and I’ll get $25 after your first stay and $75 if you decide to host.
Hat tip to baciboo from reddit.com/r/churning
