How to Save Money On Travel: Activities/Excursions/Tours Edition (Using GetYourGuide and Viator)
Updated November 3, 2025
Originally published November 1, 2025
The reality is that traveling can still be expensive even if you have used miles for your flight and points for your hotel with money spent on activities and excursions quickly adding up.
I have talked about it before but here I will do a deep dive into what I mean when I say that I am maximizing my spend which is really is how I save money and earn miles/points on the things I see and do whilst on my trips.
Please note: this post contains affiliate links which means if you buy something following a link on this page, I may get a small commission. There is no additional cost to you and helps reduce the ever-increasing costs of keeping this site active. Thanks for supporting my blog (AKA feeding my ice cream addiction around the world!) Rosemary
Why Use Viator or GetYourGuide
Viator is a platform that allows you to book tours, excursions, museum passes and much more around the world – they are similar to Etsy in which they host the tour companies that provide these services or goods (but they do not directly provide the tours as Etsy does not directly sell the handcrafted items on its site). I love that I can see reviews to help me choose the right company and love that there are double/triple travel hacking stacking opportunities (more on that of this post). For more info on Viator, check out this post.
In the same vein, GetYourGuide is also a platform that allows you to book tours, excursions, museum passes and much more around the world. While there is often overlap between the two, there are often times that I can only find an activity on GetYourGuide or Viator so it pays to check both sites out. For more info on GetYourGuide, check out my review and how to guide here.
For those that do not have cards that waive foreign transaction fees, when you purchase a tour on GetYourGuide or Viator, you can pay in your currency of choice* (*from those offered by GetYourGuide / Viator). This saves you money as those fees can quickly add up as most debit and credit cards charge 1 – 3% for the foreign transaction conversion fee!
Savings Using GetYourGuide
Never used the GetYourGuide app before and want to save 5% on an activity or excursion? You must use my referral to download the app and then book via app with discount code: BEAUTLIFEWORLD5.
For more on the discount code specifically, read this and on GetYourGuide in general, read this
Savings Using Viator
Viator Rewards
- Introduced in 2023, this program now gives you 5% of the tour price on eligible bookings upon completion (the amounts that you are seeing above right are when it was 10% of the activity/excursion price!)
- You can see the rewards amount during booking or on your confirmation if eligible as well as Viator sending you an email once they have been added to your account
- Once added to your account, the funds can be used towards future bookings.
- Beautiful tips: Learn from my unfortunate mistakes.
- 1: You will earn rewards in the currency of your first booking so all other bookings need to be in that currency to earn rewards (ie 1st: paid in US dollars, 5th: paid in British pounds – I did not earn on these and that was a chunk of cash)
- 2: Rewards expire 180 days after they are added to your account – I had over $200 expire!
Viator Rewards – My Real Life Redemptions
Also known as all of the activities that I was able to do around the world for only $1 (and these are only the activities that I have written up about!)
Add in More Savings with Shopping Portals
One of my fave resources and it’s free! Cashback monitor helps me figure out which shopping portal is paying what and is a good time to showcase how personalized travel hacking is? AA miles are so valuable to me that I would forgo what is technically more cashback – more why in the AA Shopping Portal section below =)
More Savings with Cash Back when using Rakuten
Book via Rakuten and earn cashback or Amex MR points – here’s all you need to know about Rakuten here.
Even better is that if you have never used Rakuten before, you can sign up via my referral link and earn $50 once you have spent $50!
This is an all time high bonus as it is typically $30!
Or Wanting Miles Instead? Use the AA Shopping Portal
I will typically use the American Airline eshopping portal – read this for my detailed explanation for why, but the TLDR version is that 1392 AA miles is more valuable than the $18.56 I would have earned at 8% Cashback via Rakuten for these activities. I flew to Anguilla in January for only 12K Miles (and that flight was originally 10K Miles but I kept changing the dates last minute) and the flights would have been $1,148.41 had I paid in cash!
Remember to Check For Credit Card Offers To Add in More Savings!
I make a habit to check my credit card for offer periodically but especially when I am booking activities and excursions as I have seen Viator offers for both my AMEX and Chase cards – sadly have not seen any for GetYourGuide ever.
Note: that this deal shows up periodically on Chase Offers as the one shown expired August 30 but I received another one right after that expired September 29 AND the best part of Chase Offers is that they can be used on ALL cards that you have the offer on versus Amex when you can only redeem once! You just need to add the offer to all cards before having one of the offers redeemed. For my Iceland trip, this was be a very nice bonus for me!
See how easy it is to make your money work harder for you?
