IHG has a travel portal called Trip Extras, which allows members to book attraction tickets and tourist activities, backed by Viator.
According to the (very limited) promotion materials, members earn 1,000 IHG points per booking. There are some very cheap activities on Trip Extras, offering potential arbitrage opportunities to buy IHG points at low cost.
You can search by city name and rank the results by lowest price first. Here’s what you see for Beijing:
Pay attention to the Earn 1,000 Points label on the top left, although I couldn’t find any other terms and conditions for the offer. 1,000 Points would otherwise cost you $5 under IHG’s most generous point sales.
What’s even crazier, you can find something for $0.05 in Ho Chi Minh city.
I made two test bookings about a week ago but haven’t seen any trace of the 1,000 points yet. Two Bonus Point Voucher of 100 points each have shown up, but I’m not sure if they are related.
I don’t see enough data points of whether or not it works yet, feel free to do a test and report back.
Pls let us know if it works!
For which date did you booked the activity? is that already crossed or some future date?
Book as close as possible
any idea how long it takes till the points would show?
I think my post is clear about that
Istanbul has a $1 city guide I got yesterday as a pdf. has a good section on all the food types. If the points come through I guess I will buy a copy everyday.
Also got 2 of the 35cent Saigon tours. I did not like the 5c one as they asked for passport details and Date for birth which did not seem safe.
I will report back if any points arrive
Did exactly the same. All booked for July 1/2/3. Will post back
Thanks
So all my experiences were canceled & refunded, nothing credited
You don’t have to provide real details if you don’t plan to show up
Hi, I’m from Indonesia & I’ve tried to buy the $0.05, $0.35 & $1 many times using many Indonesian & US based debit & credit cards to no avail. Anybody has any idea why? Can anyone help?
Hi . Im from South Africa and also had the same problem.. I tried dollar based and my local card . It hasn’t worked for me.
My US Amex worked fine
I had chatted with the support team for the t&c. They said points will be credited in 6 weeks from date of activity..
I don’t quite believe it. Let’s see.
Tried several credit cards, but none worked (Visa/Master, Credit and debit from Switzerland + Revolut). Can you please all post your successful card types?
It seems that Trip Extras have a minimum price of $10 now. Can’t find anything cheaper anywhere. So I guess this is no longer interesting