Airbnb is one of those spending categories that has been tough to earn bonus miles and points from in the past.

I posted last week on new ways to earn bonus points on in-store, Amazon and Starbucks spending, but now there’s a new way to earn bonus miles on Airbnb spending.

Once again, it’s United’s MileagePlus X app, which just added Airbnb to its list of merchants.

The 3 United miles per dollar spent is much better than the 1 mile per dollar offered through Virgin America’s portal, though Virgin does offer 1,500 miles if it’s your first Airbnb booking.

The bonus miles from MileagePlus combined with the points earned by the credit card you use to pay would rack you up solid earnings if you use Airbnb at all regularly.

Here’s an example of what you’d earn from MileagePlus on a $90 Airbnb booking:

If you used the Citi Prestige or Chase Sapphire Reserve, both credit cards that earn 3x points on Airbnb purchases, the combined earning on this example booking would be 540 points/miles. Pretty good.

Update 10.4: As TravelSkills points out, Airbnb just linked up with Qantas as well (1 mile/dollar).

Update 12.25: United took Airbnb off MPX not long after it was added, but they said it’d eventually be back.

In the meantime, you can always use Jetblue’s 3 miles/dollar portal to Amazon, where you can buy Airbnb gift cards.

Update 8.3: As of today, Airbnb is back in the MPX app, at only 2 miles/dollar this time.

Thoughts? Please let me know if you have a method of Airbnb earning that I missed!