Hong Kong MTR Airport Express: buy 1 get 1 free promotion
 

http://browngeek.net/airport-express-buy-1-get-1-free

MTR are presently running a promotion from 1 January to 30 September 2013 for holders of Visa Signature and Visa Infinite cards whereby you can buy a single ticket and obtain a second one for half price: Buy one get one free.

This is excellent value, compared to other ways of buying Airport Express tickets. Basically a return for two people from Hong Kong Station to Hong Kong Airport with this offer will cost HK$200. The next cheapest option is buying return tickets from a travel agent, who typically charge anywhere between HK$130 - 160 per person. Purchasing a return ticket at Hong Kong station costs HK$180 or buying two single journey group of 2 tickets would cost HK$160 per person, while buying a return ticket online costs HK$171.

Please note the terms and conditions of the offer.

http://www.mtr.com.hk/eng/fares_tickets/intro.html

http://www.mtr.com.hk/eng/whatsnew/a...1get1free.html

FYI, applies to cardholders of the following countries: Hong Kong, Macau, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia or Thailand.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 6_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10A523 Safari/8536.25)

OP you meant airport express (the train) but not homg kong express? (The airline)

Yep, thanks, sorry about that, amended the OP.

Shame that there is a country restriction for these cards -- have US issued ones that would have been handy.

tb

+1. Agreed. :td:

noobie
 

I'll be Hong Kong in June with about 30 friends (study abroad) and we have a couple days to travel, and then we have to get to the airport ourselves. Is this something worth mentioning/buying? I only need 1 way to the airport, and plan on spending most of my time in Macau's casinos... but I would be more inclined to travel if I bought a 3 day pass. TIA

If you need a return from the airport, then it's a good deal. If not, there are other ways you can get to the airport for cheaper, albeit a little slower (bus, MTR to Tung Chung, then bus, etc.). Note that this only takes you to and from the airport.

You'll need either an Octopus Card or a day pass to get you around the city. If you're planning to travel to a lot of places using the MTR, then the day pass is useful. But if you want to check out places where the MTR doesn't go (the peak, Stanley, etc.), it's probably better just to get the Octopus card.

Transportation in Hong Kong is relatively cheap. Crossing the harbor, and going to the airport are the two most expensive costs transportation-wise.

There are "group" tickets if you can find at least one other team member to travel with you:

http://www.mtr.com.hk/eng/whatsnew/p..._4persons.html

Where will you be starting your journey to the airport on departure? There are other options such as the "A" prefix Cityflyer buses:

http://www.nwstbus.com.hk/routes/air...px?intLangID=1

If you buy the 3-day AETP, the price includes a HK$50 refundable deposit, plus any unused value stored in the AETP (or the regular Octopus card) are fully refundable when you return the card for cancellation on departure. Buy in advance over the MTR web site and you get a small discount with the AETP.

anyone tried US based card for this promo? How would MTR know where the Visa signature is based out of?

I guess based on the card. Each card number has specific codes, one of those codes is the issuing bank number, based on that it can probably work out which banks can accept the promotion.

Yep, I believe the first 4 digits are country specific. There will be more than 1 set per country, but that set will not be shared across countries if you get what I mean....

it doesn't hurt to try since I need to purchase some mtr passes anyway, i'll post the results

Terms and conditions
 

For benefit of people who don't want to click through:

I bolded the limitation to countries that is most important (pending confirmation/conflicting evidence from tommy14).

NO GO! for non specific (location) issued cards, transaction is rejected at the processing level when the promo option is selected, oh well...

BTW one needs to produce the credit card used to pay when collecting the tickets along with the e-mail order confirmation. It will be quite obvious that it is not a regionally issued Visa.