Online Hotel Affiliate Programs

[ZacEdward]

Hi.

Thank you for your interest in my topic.

When it comes to online hotel affiliate programs there seems to be a fairly large supply. I am current seeking a notable online hotel affiliate program for my website.

I have primarily four major categories which influence my decision. These are (1) commission; (2) linking methods (3) number of hotels; and (4) support and account management.

Firstly I believe that HotelsCombined.com offers the highest commission. The website mentioned that you can earn 70% of all PPC revenue. The next highest commission I found was on Agoda.com which mentioned that you can earn up to 60%. Has anyone found a higher commission?

Secondly, linking methods seem to be standard with white-labels and cobranded solutions, XML, hotel data files and multiple linking capabilities.

Thirdly, it seems that HotelsCombined.com also has the largest number of hotels. with 200,000 unique hotels and over 800,000 hotel deals across 195 countries. I was surprise to see that Expedia.com only has 60,000 hotels worldwide. Again, has anyone found a website which has a database of more hotels?

Lastly, support and account management is a key concern of mind. After looking at a number of websites such as Expedia and Priceline they use third party Commission Junction to handle affiliates. Should my wish list of being able to contact and speak to an affiliate account manager be merely 'wish'?

Zac.

[morleymouse]

Hi Zac,

Hope all is well

THe things your looking at are good, id be tempted to add one more - price. There are a lot of hotel aggregator sites all using a range of suppliers, some have good contracts and low margins which gives a very competative price to the consumer, some have good contracts and high margins which is jsut greedy, and others have crap contracts and will always be expensive Check some comparison sites ot make sure you pick someone who has good prices in the areas you wish to promote or your conversion will struggle.

Commission - watch out what figure you look at. If Agoda.com offer 60% commission whats this of? As i cant believe that its of the total booking price, a hotel reservation for £300 - are they going to give you £180 and then somehow from the remainder pay the hotel and make a profit themselves?

Most companies making large commission claims offer it on profit and you need to know what this is beofre you commit to working with them.

HotelsCombined.com is a white label comparison site, good but depends how far you want to take it. In reality your using another affiliate site to drive your sales and your relationship is with them.

Depends on how your going to market them but i wouldnt say number of hotels is a massive issue, availability is what you need to check.

[helsby]

Dan is right; 60% of what? Commission should really only be judged based upon the % of the total selling price versus your ppc cost/marketing cost to generate traffic.

Number of hotels is subjective to what marketing method your trying to push. A comparison site might look great with 40,000 hotels but in reality the consumer is more likley to buy with a properly segmented reuslt for the location they are searching at competitive prices. So i'd echo Dan in that availability not volume of hotels is much more critical.

Other questions to ask would be telephone support; hotel buyers need help and will you be credited for the telephone sale? Is there support at times when people need it (evenings and early mornings pre office opening hours?)

Your critical decisions will have to be based upon what form of affiliation you want to take (white label, code integration, content building or just ppc push to a brand site).

There are plenty of more fully integrated affiliate programmes out there rather than the sites that are offering to share their commisison with you; this after all puts you lower down the food chain than if you are getting a share with a principle such as Alpharooms, Superbreak et al. My vested interest is of course Superbreak!

[Equinut]

i'd say you're best off not being wowed by 60% commission - as the guys say, for instance, 60% of 8% actually ain't that much. 60% sounds good though ;-)

by the same token, a 50% revenue share sounds pretty fair, don't you think? but if the merchant is only taking 10% in the first place, that means you get 5%, which in market terms is bugger all, when someone like Alpha will offer 7% minimum, Superbreak, more so.

hotelscombined is a good site, however they are essentially offering you a second-tier affiliation, as they are already affiliated to merchant sites - you'd be best going direct to merchants and cutting out the middleman, imo.

[ZacEdward]

Hi,

Thank you all for your feedback.

I looked further into HotelsCombined.com and decided to go with them on all 5 categories; (1) commission; (2) linking methods (3) number of hotels; (4) support and account management; and (5) price.

[John Jupp]

HotelsCombined don't offer white label to everyone and their linking method in the feeds (all 26 of them) are a pain. Having to build a script to display them at the moment. Real pain. However it'll be done soon.

[sandy3]

If you have the possibility of trying the various suppliers it would be great. That way you can compare what conversion rates and revenues they all generate.
I know it's probably a lot of work but may be worth it...