How to earn frequent flyer miles from your Airbnb stays

If you have started to use Airbnb for some of your travelling, you may have thought that you had to give up earning airline miles from your stays. 

This is no longer true.

(If you’ve never used Airbnb, you can use Anika’s referral link here to get £25 off your first booking.)

There are three ways of earning miles from your stays.   You can’t earn Avios or Virgin Flying Club miles, unfortunately, but these three options are better than nothing.

All of these deals require you to book via the relevant airline portal.  Unless you cancel and rebook, you cannot get miles for any existing Airbnb bookings.

Delta Air Lines

US airline Delta is currently offering the most generous bonus.  Until 30th April, you will earn 2,000 Skymiles with your first stay over $150 (it must be booked by 30 April 2017, the stay can be later). If your first stay costs between $75 and $150 you only get 500 miles.

On-going earnings are 3 Skymiles per $1 spent.

Full details are on this page.

Delta is a SkyTeam member and a Virgin Atlantic partner.  You can also top up your Delta miles via an American Express Membership Rewards transfer.

Note that the Delta sign-up bonus of $25 is a lot lower than the £30 credit via our link above.  If you are new to Airbnb and don’t think that you will ever use the Skymiles, you might want to ignore the 2,000 miles and take the £30 instead.

You can also earn up to 25,000 Delta Skymiles for becoming an Airbnb host.  You can learn more via the link above.  You may want to run the maths on signing up your property and having your friends make the requisite number of qualifying bookings, for which you pay them back when they no-show …..

Qantas

You can earn 1 Qantas Point per A$1 spent on Airbnb.  Bookings need to be made via this page of the Qantas website.

You can use Qantas points to book British Airways flights, but there are few other ways of earning Qantas Points as a UK resident.  In any event, only Qantas accounts registered to an Australian address are eligible to earn from Airbnb.

Virgin America

Given that Virgin America has now merged with Alaska Airlines, it isn’t clear how long this offer will last.  At present you will earn miles for Airbnb bookings starting on or before 1st November.

First-time Airbnb users can earn 1,500 Elevate points plus get $20 off their first bookings.

Going forward, you earn 1 Elevate point for every $1 spent. 

New hosts will receive 20,000 Elevate points after their fifth stay.

---

Hotel offers update – April 2024:

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Want to buy hotel points?

• Hilton Honors is offering a 100% bonus when you buy points by 14th May 2024. Click here.