For months, public shopping portal Capital One Shopping has been offering a “Today’s Top Offer” boost for one specific merchant. While the exact targeted rates can vary, most (all?) Capital One Shopping users should see a boosted rate for Viator today (2/2/26) only. I’m seeing 45% back up to $1,000 back as the headline offer on my household accounts, which can be a fantastic deal for those booking activities. However, when my wife scrolled further in her home page offers, she found 50% back, so it’s worth hunting around within your home page offers.
The Deal
- Capital One Shopping is offering a boosted rewards rate today only (2/2/26) for Viator. We are mostly seeing 45% back, though the rate you see can vary. Check your Capital One Shopping home page (and be sure to scroll as rates can sometimes vary as you scroll the home page)
New to Capital One Shopping?
If you are new to Capital One Shopping, you can earn a bonus by signing up through a referral and meeting spending requirements. See more detail in this post and use the referral link below to claim a bonus.
Capital One Shopping Referrals
- Nick's household Referral Link ($80 bonus)
Key Terms
- Boosted “deal of the day” payout valid 2/2/26 only
Quick Thoughts
While I am not a big fan of Viator as a company, but the potential for 45% back on activities is hard to ignore, particularly if you have your eye on an expensive activity. While the exact rates and terms can vary with Capital One Shopping deals, I am seeing 45% back up to $1,000 back.
My wife was also seeing the same offer in the screen shot above at the top of her Capital One Shopping home page. However, scrolling down through the targeted offers on her home page eventually revealed an offer for 50% back. It’s always worth scrolling to check.
A couple of months ago, I used a similar deal to get a similar rate of return on an airport transfer to and from Atlantis in the Bahamas and one from Seattle-Tacoma airport to a city-center hotel, both of which were roughly the same prices through Viator as what I’d have paid elsewhere, so getting a big rewards percentage was icing on the cake. All of those transfers were great experiences. As I previously reported, some Capital One Shopping travel-related purchases initially track as “ineligible”, and later change to “confirmed” a while after the activities were completed. However, in my recent experiences with Viator, transactions have tracked within a couple days of booking as “pending” at the correct rewards rate. It’s worth being aware that it could go either way.
The last time that Capital One Shopping offered big payouts on activities, I seriously considered chartering a catamaran during a trip, as the rewards would have been awesome. This time around, I’m looking closely at our travel plans for the year to see where I might be able to make that type of splurge.
Do keep in mind, though, that Viator is not known for its customer service. I have several times had a tour operator randomly cancel on me the day before the scheduled activity, even though they were still selling the activity through Viator, and Viator customer service is no help at all. In fact, I had booked a limo transfer from New York-JFK to our hotel in Manhattan for the return from our December trip to Europe, and I woke up in Europe to head to the airport with a message in my inbox that the operator “had a limo go down” for a repair the day before, and they cancelled my transfer (and did not respond to my message about how they were still offering that transfer for sale). I had a similar situation with a hot air balloon tour I’d booked, where the operator cancelled our reservation a few days before we were scheduled to do it and raised the price of the activity on the Viator website. Viator was no help in getting rebooked.
That said, I understand those limitations and still use Viator in situations where it makes sense (and, as noted above, I had good experiences with a few airport transfers last year, and I’ve had plenty of other good experiences, too).
Keep in mind that Capital One Shopping rewards can only be redeemed for gift cards, though the selection has improved quite a bit (and anecdotal reports indicate that some people have seen new gift card options pop up within the last few days). If you were planning to book activities already, this deal is worth a look. Also keep an eye out for card-linked offers. Some card-linked Viator offers have recently expired, but it is worth checking your cards today to see if any have been extended.
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Is it possible to use the 45% with the shopping portal and the 20X from the card offer? While I don’t imagine it’s possible, which would be better?
No.
Better is subjective there. The 45% can only be redeemed for gift cards for those merchants available, so it depends on how much you value that and how much you value the miles. I value the gift cards pretty highly. Let’s say they’re worth 90% of face value to me. That makes 45% back really like 40% cash value. If I valued the miles at more than $0.02 per mile, I would take the miles. If I value them less, I would take the 45%. Other folks will value the gift cards at far less and might value the miles more, particularly those who don’t have a lot of existing miles. Your mileage may, as they say, vary.
Can you use the offer more than once today? Or is it a one and done?
As answered below, I have been able to use these deal of the day offers multiple times in the past. I would expect you can use it more than once.
Thanks!!!
I scrolled down and was able to find the same targeted offer you found in your wife’s account, 50% up to $1000 off. Really appreciate this head’s up post and will try to book a few tour for this coming March.
Data Point: I see the 45% offer in my Capital One Shopping Portal page. I then went to Viator to see if I could find something of interest.
I found a tour I’m interested in and looked at the page for a bit.
Now in my inbox is a 50% off ($1000 back max) that particular tour.
Unfortunately, it’s too early for me to book the tour for my trip but hopefully it helps others.
I also have 20x points via my Venture X so be sure to check that too.
Those email offers look like they are for a specific thing (“that particular tour”), but they aren’t — that’ll work for booking anything via Viator. It is really, really common to get a higher emailed offer after surfing around a website and not buying anything. And they frequently advertise the rate based on whatever you have already looked at (like that tour), but it isn’t specific to an item. That’s something we’ve covered a number of times before, but I didn’t think to mention in this post, so thanks for highlighting that.
Mine is 50$ back but only up to $250, which is really sad. 🙁 Does anyone know if you can use the deal more than once? I didn’t see anything about it in the T&C.
Also — has anyone who used Rakuten back on Jan 14th when it was giving 22% back at Viator actually had their tours tracked yet? Mine showed up with shopping IDs but never went pending.
I’ve used them multiple times many times in the past and cumulatively earned more than $250 without issue.
Got the 45x and purchased four events. At the time of purchase it only gave me a congratulations you have earned something much less than 45x (closer to 5x). Will this payout update? I probably wouldn’t do all the events at full price. Any past DPs on this? Will I see an increase in payouts in a few days.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. I’ve done many, many Capital One Shopping deals — I’ve never seen a “congratulations you have earned” anything the same day of the purchase. Was that an email, or something you saw on the landing page?
Great catch. I have seen some Viator deals hedged with so much exclusionary language that the exceptions outnumber the supported activities. You may want to discuss that at some point.
My experience with Viator has been excellent. Not only have my excursions been great but the Customer Service has been outstanding too. I wasn’t able to find my tour in Cozumel and call their customer service number and they made sure that my tour guide waited a half hour until I could find him.
That’s great to hear about your experience contacting Viator customer service. I’m surprised they helped you find the local tour guide!
Tours themselves will always depend on the operator, and it wouldn’t surprise me if most people operating tours (or at least most with good reviews) provide good service. My gripe with Viator is just in Viator’s customer service. As I noted in the post, I’ve had operators cancel on me at the last minute a few times (despite the fact that they were still taking bookings on Viator), and Viator hasn’t been helpful as an intermediary at all (and I’ve heard the same from others). In those specific instances, I obviously got unlucky in terms of the tour operator, and I don’t blame that part on Viator at all. I do blame their unwillingness to rebook me for the same with another operator or offer some other type of remedy beyond “Tough luck, dude.” But, that said, I know that the negative experiences like that aren’t the norm, which is why I still use it when there are big cash back offers.
Only 20X here : (
That would be on a credit card through Capital One Offers. This post is about Capital One shopping. Those are separate things. Still, 20X miles is a pretty good return!
I booked a tour of Mo’orea for 20x points. Also have a couple booked for when we are in Austria at a previous 30x points! We have always had good experiences with Viator and they are my go to company for activities during our trips.
Ah, right you are! Looks like I do have the 45% back on shopping once I checked there.