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IHG Rewards Club has teamed up with Viator and is offering 1,000 points whenever you book activities directly with them.
The IHG activities portal can be found here. Simply do a search for a destination, attraction or tour and it’ll display all the options that could normally be booked through Viator.
My wife and I are currently in Atlanta and are due to visit the World of Coca-Cola in the next few days. We already have our tickets thanks to (the now defunct) MyCokeRewards, but I checked to see how prices would compare when booked via IHG rather than directly with World of Coca-Cola.
If booking directly with World of Coca-Cola, the total cost for two adults tickets would be $37.03 including tax.
Booking those same tickets directly with IHG would cost $37.02. That’s a penny cheaper and appears to simply be a difference in how they calculate the tax.
Similarly, booking the tickets on Viator would cost $37.02.
There’d therefore be no point booking directly with World of Coca-Cola seeing as you can earn additional rewards and pay a penny less.
There are several things to consider before booking your activities through IHG:
Ticket Requirements
I checked numerous activities on the IHG site and every single one required a minimum of two tickets being booked in order to earn the 1,000 points.
Discounts
Some activities and tours offer discounts for AAA members, military, etc. Be sure to check if any of those or similar discounts are available when booking directly with the destination. That’s because you’re not able to take advantage of them when booking via IHG.
Cashback Portal For IHG
The activities are booked directly on IHG’s website. Portals are currently offering up to 8% cashback on IHG reservations, so you might be able to earn cashback when booking these activities.
However, I haven’t actually booked any activities via IHG yet, so I’m not certain this’ll stack. For example, TopCashback’s terms for IHG state “Cash Back is only available for commissionable IHG rates.” That makes it sound like cashback is only payable for eligible room reservations rather than anything else. However, it doesn’t hurt to click through from a portal first just in case.
Viator Cashback
Something else to bear in mind is that Viator does appear on various cashback portals, going as high as 6% on TopCashback right now.
Depending on the cost of your tickets and your valuation of IHG Rewards Club points, it might make more sense to earn cashback for booking directly on Viator rather than with IHG.
Maximize Credit Card Rewards
Payment for IHG activities is processed by Viator rather than IHG. Viator codes as travel and so earns 3X Ultimate Rewards points when paying with the Chase Sapphire Reserve and Chase Ink Business Preferred credit cards.
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Did you get the portal bonus?
[…] Activities” portal (powered by Viator, and purchases are processed through Viator (Hat Tip: Frequent Miler)) to earn 1,000 IHG points for your […]
[…] alternative would be to book it through IHG’s activity portal which is run by Viator. The cost would be the same as Viator, you’d still earn 3x with the […]
Stephen Pepper, thank you for this post. Its very inspiring.
[…] Earn 1,000 IHG Rewards Club Points When Booking Activities, Frequent Miler […]