Airbnb lands in Amex Travel with 1 million listings and 5X points

American Express and Airbnb have launched an exclusive partnership that lets U.S. cardholders search more than one million Airbnb listings from a new Homes tab on AmexTravel.com and in the Amex Travel app. The deal includes earning up to 5X Membership Rewards points on prepaid stays, and goes further: Platinum cardholders can apply the $600 annual lodging credit, previously called a hotel credit, to Airbnb Luxe homes booked for two nights or more. Booking a Luxe stay also unlocks a new $250 annual credit for Airbnb Experiences.

According to Skift, this is Airbnb's most integrated loyalty partnership to date and its biggest step toward becoming a lodging supplier. The difference from the airline deals Airbnb has run for a decade with Qantas, Delta and British Airways is substantial: those were mostly a tracked link sending members to Airbnb.com. Now the search happens inside Amex Travel, and Amex's lodging credit can be spent on Airbnb inventory. The move also has a name attached: Kenneth Chenault, an Airbnb board member, is linked to the operation.

For hotels, the reading is direct. Amex Travel stops being an exclusively hotel channel and opens its premium storefront to inventory competing for the same high-spend customer. That forces hotels to review how their product is positioned in that channel and what differential value they offer against a Luxe home with an applicable credit. For OTAs and distribution managers, the question is whether this kind of integration becomes the new standard for loyalty partnerships: the tracked link loses ground to real integration in the search engine.

Airbnb gains access to a premium cardholder who has already decided to spend, and Amex expands its catalogue without building its own inventory. The risk for the hotel sector lies in comparability: the same credit that used to go to a hotel room can now go to a luxury vacation home. Two things are worth watching. First, whether the model is replicated in markets outside the U.S. and with other card issuers. Second, whether the $250 Experiences credit becomes a cross-sell lever Airbnb didn't have until now. The integration has started in the U.S., but the precedent is already written.