Airbnb’s Amex Deal Quietly Shuts a Door on Vrbo

On Thursday, October 23, Airbnb became the exclusive vacation rental partner for American Express Travel. More than a million Airbnb listings now appear in a new Homes tab on the Amex Travel website and app, and Amex closed its own Select Homes + Retreats product the same day.

Airbnb keeps the sale, payment, messaging and support, so cardmembers search inside Amex Travel but book with Airbnb. An Amex spokesperson said there is no change to its existing business with Expedia, which has supplied flights, hotels and technology to Amex Travel since 2015, when Expedia bought Travelocity. Airbnb and Expedia declined to comment.

The wrinkle is Vrbo. Skift notes Expedia began supplying Vrbo rentals to business-to-business partners in 2025, including Alaska Airlines, Delta and Revolut. Because Airbnb’s deal is exclusive, Amex is now closed to that inventory, even though Vrbo never held the account to lose.

It also goes further than Airbnb’s existing tracked-link arrangements with Qantas, Delta and British Airways, placing it inside the card-points channel that Expedia calls central to its B2B business. That unit grew gross bookings 21 percent in the second quarter of 2026, its twentieth straight quarter of double-digit growth, and Vrbo still has room to expand across Expedia’s roughly 75,000 B2B partners.

Sources: Skift