The Ultimate Guide to Viator Rewards

If you’ve ever organised a holiday, chances are you’ve booked an activity, tour or day trip online. Among the most popular travel booking websites is Viator, which features more than 30,000 experiences around the globe.

Viator Rewards is the platform’s loyalty program, incentivising customers with ‘money back’ on their bookings. The model is simple – spend on experiences and earn a percentage of your booking back as Rewards.

Here’s how you can earn rewards when booking travel experiences.

What are the benefits of Viator Rewards?

The drawcard of the Viator Rewards program is the ability to earn a percentage of what you spend on bookings credited to your account as a dollar amount. This is especially lucrative if you’re booking activities for multiple people or booking high-value tours and experiences.

Effectively, the more you book – and the more you spend – on Viator, the more Rewards you’ll earn, which can be used to offset the cost of future bookings.

Viator Rewards are credited to your account after you complete a booked activity, so the program benefits those who make more than one booking on the platform.

How do I earn Viator Rewards?

Here’s where it gets vague: Viator does not explicitly state on its website what percentage of your booking you’ll earn in Rewards dollars. But from what we’ve seen across multiple bookings, it appears to be 5% of the value of your booking back in Viator Rewards.

You’ll see how many Viator Rewards dollars you earn during the booking process on eligible tours and activities.

You can also view how many Viator Rewards dollars you’ll earn under your account’s ‘Bookings‘ tab.

You don’t need to do anything special to earn Viator Rewards aside from creating an account. Once you’re logged in, you’ll automatically earn Viator Rewards on eligible bookings.

But there are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to earning Rewards:

• You won’t earn Rewards when using a promotional code at checkout.
• Bookings made through third-party links (like travel agents or affiliate partners) are not eligible to earn Rewards.
• You must book on the Viator website or app to earn Rewards.
• Rewards can only be earned if the booking is made in the same currency in which you already have rewards.
• Rewards won’t be earned if you cancel a booking.

Provided your booking meets all of the requirements, Rewards will be available in your Viator account 24 hours after the activity’s start time.

As highlighted above, you won’t earn any Rewards from your booking if you use a promotional or discount code. So, it’s worth considering whether you’ll get more value from using a code for a cheaper booking or paying full price to earn Rewards.

How do I redeem Viator Rewards?

Once you’ve got some dollars in the kitty, redeeming Rewards on your next Viator booking is easy.

1. Log into your Viator account.
2. Select your experience and follow the steps to checkout.
3. At checkout, you’ll be prompted to apply your Rewards to offset the cost of your booking. If you don’t want to use your Rewards, toggle the switch ‘off’.

Importantly, you can’t redeem some of your Rewards dollars – it’s all or nothing.

Another quirk of Viator Rewards redemptions is that the minimum amount payable after redeeming your Rewards must be one local currency unit. So, if your booking is AU$10, and you have $13.50 in Rewards (i.e. more than 100% of your booking value), you’ll need to redeem all of your Rewards and pay $1 via your normal form of payment, such as a card. You won’t be able to use that extra $3.50 on another booking, so it’s best to redeem your Rewards for a booking greater than your Rewards’ value.

Rewards also can’t be redeemed for a booking where a promotional or discount code is used. Again, you’ll have to pick one or the other!

Do Viator Rewards expire?

They sure do. Once Rewards dollars are available in your account, you have 180 days to redeem them.

Unfortunately, Viator will not notify you if your dollars are due to expire, so you’ll need to monitor your account.

Maximising your rewards when booking with Viator

Viator Rewards can be a great way to ‘save’ on activity bookings, as you’ll earn dollars to put towards future bookings. But what if you don’t travel often?

Effectively, Viator Rewards offers 5% back on the value of your booking. However, cashback sites like Shopback and Cashrewards generally offer a higher percentage back without locking you into redeeming your rewards on one platform. This can be a better alternative for those who travel less frequently or don’t have a need for future activity bookings. Cashback sites are classified as third-party links and, as per Viator’s terms and conditions, are ineligible for earning Rewards. You’ll have to choose between collecting Rewards or earning cashback, so there’s no double-dipping.

But you can double-dip by booking with a points-earning credit card. Particularly on high-value bookings like multi-day tours, you could amass a tidy sum of points by using a credit card to pay for a purchase you’d make anyway.

Summing up

Joining Viator Rewards is valuable if you regularly book travel activities and tours. The program is free to join and has a simple earning and redeeming structure. You’ll just need to monitor your Rewards to ensure they don’t expire.

If you don’t like the idea of your rewards being tied to a platform, you could use a cashback site that provides similar – and sometimes better – value when using Viator.

Also read: The Ultimate Guide to Genius

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