Pelago Review: Singapore Airlines' Tours and Tickets App, and What the US$16 Invite Is Worth

Pelago is a booking platform for travel activities: attraction tickets, day tours, theme parks, rail passes, airport transfers, eSIMs, lounges and similar extras. It belongs to Encounters Pte. Ltd., a Singapore company that Singapore Airlines' own financial statements list as 100% owned. Singapore Airlines came up with the idea in 2019, the platform launched in Singapore in 2021, it spread across Asia-Pacific and into Europe in 2022 and 2023, and the app arrived in December 2024. It holds a Singapore travel agent licence, number TA03351.

Pelago itself doesn't run the activities. Under its terms you book with the Experience Provider, a local operator, and Pelago acts as the facilitator that sells the ticket, takes the payment and handles customer service. That matters when something goes wrong: the operator's rules and the product page's cancellation policy decide most outcomes.

Pelago lists more than 200,000 activities in over 2,000 destinations, and the App Store listing says 150-plus countries. It grew out of Singapore and Asia-Pacific and only added Europe from 2022, and the app's languages tell you where its customers are: English, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai and Simplified Chinese. For Singapore, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Bali or Australia it's a natural place to look; for activities close to home in Europe or the Americas, it's rarely the obvious one.

It doesn't sell flights, and a single activity ticket isn't a package holiday, so package-travel protections where you live generally don't apply. Each booking is a separate purchase from a company based in Singapore. Your protection is the cancellation policy on the product page, Pelago's terms and, if a paid booking falls through and Pelago won't sort it, a chargeback through your card provider.

Open our invite and create a new account on the page it shows, with KrisFlyer, Google, Facebook or an email address. Pelago issues one referral promo code worth US$8 that can be used twice. The terms say the referred person must click the link and sign up from that page, so there's no code to type; signing up through the normal app or website instead means no referral code.

Then log in to the Pelago app with the same account. Referral codes only work in the app, on bookings worth at least S$75 or the equivalent (about US$59), and they expire 90 days after they're issued. Pick the code at checkout. It can't be stacked with any other promotion or promo code, and some products are on Pelago's exclusion list. The code's currency and amount are fixed by the invite, so it's US$8 a time whichever currency you browse in.

Disclosure: the invite carries our own referral code, RF4A3KM9. When your first booking is fulfilled, Pelago gives us a promo code too. It costs you nothing and doesn't change your discount.

Because it's a fixed US$8 rather than a percentage, the code is worth most on bookings close to the S$75 minimum. At early-November rates US$8 is about S$10.25. That's 13.7% off a S$75 booking, 10.2% off S$100, 5.1% off S$200 and 3.4% off S$300.

A worked example: a couple heading to Singapore books two attraction tickets for S$80 one week and a S$80 river cruise and dinner package the next. Each booking takes US$8 off, so they pay about S$139.50 instead of S$160. Put the same US$16 against a single S$600 family day at a theme park and it's under 2% off, and only one of the two uses would count. Split the code across two mid-priced activities you were going to book anyway.

Every new Pelago account also gets Pelago's standard new-account code: 10% off, capped at S$10, valid for 90 days and only on your first booking. Tick the marketing consent box at sign-up and a second code arrives: 10% off capped at S$5, valid for 180 days, usable once. Singapore Airlines and Scoot passengers can also claim a passenger discount by entering their flight booking reference at checkout.

The catch is that each booking takes one promotion. The invite describes the referral code as US$8 off your first two app bookings, and US$8 (about S$10.25) is at least as much as the new-account code's S$10 cap, so put the referral code on your first two qualifying bookings. Your first booking then can't also use the new-account code; the S$5 marketing-consent code still works on a later booking.

Sign up or link your account with KrisFlyer, Singapore Airlines' frequent flyer programme, which is free for anyone to join, and Pelago activity bookings earn 3 KrisFlyer miles per S$1. Miles are counted on what you actually pay after discounts, and they're taken back if you cancel. Pelago says they post within seven days of the activity; Singapore Airlines allows up to 15 working days. Since September 2025 bookings also earn 1 Elite mile per S$1 towards KrisFlyer status.

In practice that's a small extra. A S$150 day tour paid in full earns 450 miles; after a US$8 discount, about 420. You can also pay with miles at 100 miles per S$1, which values a mile at one Singapore cent. The whole booking must be paid in miles, with a 1,000-mile minimum, and that's usually a poor use of miles compared with flights. If you never fly Singapore Airlines or its partners, treat the miles as a bonus, not a reason to book.

Prices can be shown in 20 currencies, from US, Australian and Canadian dollars to euros, yen and won, and the total you see includes Pelago's prices, fees and taxes, with no separate booking fee. Pelago takes Visa, Mastercard, American Express and UnionPay, Apple Pay in Safari and Google Pay, plus regional wallets such as GrabPay, PayNow, GoPay, Naver Pay and Payco. PayPal isn't offered, and Alipay and WeChat Pay have been switched off since July 2026.

Pelago processes bookings in Singapore, and its help centre warns that cards issued elsewhere may carry a foreign transaction fee. Check what your card charges on overseas transactions before you pay; a card with no foreign transaction fees takes the question away. Pelago puts an authorisation hold on your card until the booking is confirmed: instantly for many activities, usually within 24 to 72 hours for those the operator confirms by hand. The voucher then arrives as a PDF by email and on WhatsApp.

Each product page shows one of three policies: free cancellation, free cancellation up to a set number of hours or days before the activity (in local time), or no cancellation. Miss the cut-off or the activity itself and there's no refund. Rescheduling is a request, not a right: Pelago only takes it at least three days before the activity, and the operator can say no.

If the operator cancels, Pelago refunds the full amount to your original payment method. Its help centre gives different timings for card refunds, from within ten business days to 30 working days, plus your bank's own processing, and its terms don't promise a date. The referral terms don't say whether a code used on a cancelled booking is reissued, so put the two discounts on activities you're confident about.

Support starts with an AI assistant that runs around the clock. Live chat with a person is reserved for KrisFlyer elite members and for customers with a booking today or coming up; everyone else raises a ticket, which Pelago aims to answer within two business days. There's no phone line, and the support email is [email protected].

On 4 November 2026 the app scored 4.4 from 318 ratings on the Singapore App Store, 4.7 from 76 in Australia, 4.6 from 24 in the UK and 3.9 from 26 in the US; Google Play showed 4.2 to 4.4 depending on the country, from 571 ratings and over 100,000 downloads. Trustpilot has two profiles: the current one, which Pelago invites customers to review, averages about 4.7 from roughly 500 reviews, while an older profile for its previous domain averages about 1.3 from around 120. Happy users praise easy booking, the miles and the passenger discounts. The complaints repeat: slow support behind the bot, refunds still pending months after failed or operator-cancelled bookings, missing miles, operators that didn't show or didn't pass on a cancellation, listings unclear about peak dates or ticket expiry, and failed payments that look like double charges.

Sign-up takes a few minutes: the invite page offers KrisFlyer, Google, Facebook or an email address with a one-time code. One account per person; Pelago can withhold codes or suspend accounts it believes are fake or duplicated. The app is on iPhone and Android, and the referral code needs it.

To close the account, ask the in-app virtual assistant. Pelago says deletion takes three to five days, and any bookings and unused promo codes go with it, so use or cancel what you have first. Some data may be kept where the law requires.

Use it if you're planning a trip to Singapore or elsewhere in Asia-Pacific with at least two paid activities in the next three months, each around S$75 to S$150, and you're happy to book in an app. KrisFlyer members and Singapore Airlines flyers get the most from it.

Skip it if you want a single cheap ticket under S$75, if your plans are too loose to commit to non-refundable activities, if you need phone support, or if your trip is mostly outside Asia-Pacific, which isn't Pelago's focus. And if your only card charges for overseas transactions, the fee can eat a fair slice of the discount on a bigger booking.