Musement: Book Discounted Tours Worldwide + TPG Discount

Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here.

I'm a procrastinator and rarely pre-book tours or activities before I travel abroad. I usually like to meet up with friends or friends of friends in cities, but honestly- sometimes the best way to understand the history and culture of a new city is with an experiences tour guide. I think part of the reason why I procrastinate is because finding tour information in one spot can be challenging- especially for more off the beaten path destinations.

Enter Musement.com - a website that allows you to search and book different attractions and events in cities around the world. Geared towards both savvy and "newbie" travelers, the website has a newly launched free app (available now for iOS and coming very soon to Android) which allows you to easily search for and book all kinds of activities, tours, events and city passes around the globe.

They are currently offering all TPG readers a 10 Euro discount (roughly $14 USD) on your next Musement purchase with no minimum purchase amount. The discount is available to new and returning users and must be used all at once (even if your purchase is less than 10 Euros). Note, it can only be applied to purchases made on Musement.com (not the app). Enter promo code POINTSGUY in the "discount code" field at check out. The promotional discount is valid until June 30, 2014.

Musement currently offers over 800 activities within 50 cities in 21 countries around the world. The Milan-based company is expanding and will soon offer more than 1,000 activities and is also adding new countries and cities to their offerings, growing throughout North, Central and South America, as well as Australia and Southeast Asia. The service allows you to book and securely pay for your activities ahead of time in order to avoid long wait times for popular attractions. Musement also ensures that you will be paying the lowest price possible--if you find your activity at a lower cost elsewhere, they will match it and provide you with an additional discount.

How Musement Works

Step 1. Search for and Choose Your City- For example, Venice.

Step 2. Pick Your Category- Choose from museums, ballet, art, tours, etc. All the activities within the chosen category will then show up, and you can browse to see what you want to do. The site has offerings for "off-the-beaten-path" options, like a pottery village tour in Hanoi, Vietnam or a hot air balloon ride in Las Vegas, as well as plenty of the more "typical" activities like a Paris museum pass or a Buckingham Palace tour in London.

Step 3. Pick Your Activity & Pay- Once you select your activity or event, enter the promo code POINTSGUY and pay. You will receive an e-ticket voucher in the My Trips section of the app. This will be enough (in almost every case) to access your attraction or event. You don't have to traipse all over the place trying to find an internet cafe for a printer.

Make sure to pay with a credit card that has no foreign transaction fees like the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, or the new Barclaycard Arrival with chip and pin that allows you to get a 10% points rebate on new expanded travel categories like buses, taxis, limos, campgrounds, trailer parks, timeshares, tourist attractions and exhibits, and international railway. Remember, an expense needs to be $25 (2,500 points) to be eligible to use points to wipe it off your statement.

My Experience Using Musement

The "lowest priced possible" guarantee peaked my interest, so I decided to check it out. I did a bit of research and noticed that several museum entrance fees were the same price on Musement as on the museum websites. However, the Musement site was fairly simple to navigate in comparison with some of the museum websites.

For example, the Egpytian museum in Barcelona costs 11 euros for a regular adult ticket on Musement, where I was able to quickly search and find the activity. It took me a solid few minutes to dig through the confusing Egyptian Museum website so finally find the ticket price, which was also 11 euros. I was not given an option to book tickets online through the Egyptian museum site. I am not sure if the Egpytian museum would have a line, but if I did, I would be able to skip had I purchased the tickets in advance on Musement.

Additionally, Musement does make it convenient to to purchase a senior, child, student or regular ticket, which I made sure to look at as I've had problems in the past on museum websites in Europe getting the discounted senior or student tickets.

However, some of the Musement deals do have an added extra discount, usually 10% off. I found a Rome Segway Tour with this discount, lowering the price from 75 to 67.50 euros. When I looked up the exact same tour on Italy Segways it cost the full 75 euros.

Some other options that currently offer a 10% discount are the Buckingham Palace Tour in London and the Vatican Tour in Rome, among others. However, I had to search through each city to find these, they unfortunately do not have an "offers" page or a place where all the discounts appear in one place.

Another thing I like about Musement was that it was a cool way to find out about what is happening in a particular destination. For example, when looking at Rome, I had no idea there was an Andy Warhol exhibition going on there but it was right up there with the Colesseum and Vatican tours.

Searching by city was a bit difficult on Musement as there not a list of cities available to simply choose from. The homepage provides about 10 "Top Cities" to choose from, but beyond that, I had to type each city name if I wanted to know if Musement offered any kind of attractions there. I guess this would work fine if you knew you were going to New York and simply needed to enter that city, but as far as just "browsing" goes to see several different cities, it's not convenient.

A benefit to the Museument app is that I found it to be traveler-friendly. The app downloads and updates information when you are connected to WiFi, so once you arrive in your destination, you can browse all the activities without having to use your data, therefore saving on roaming charges.

In conclusion, I had a decent experience using Musement, and I would recommend it to travelers. It can definitely save you some time and money (especially combined with extra 10 Euro TPG discount) and I plan on using it to book tours and activities in the future.

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