Best Affiliate Programs for Travel Affiliate Marketing

If you are running a website, blog, or social media account dedicated to travel, you may want to monetize your efforts. Travel affiliate programs are an excellent way to do that, but which one is the best? In this post, we will talk about some of the top travel affiliate programs and their pros and cons – so you may choose the right travel affiliate program for you.

Expedia

Expedia Affiliate Program: Overview

The Expedia.com website, owned by the Expedia Group, is one of the most popular travel booking websites in the world. Members of the Expedia affiliate program can promote car rentals, flights, hotels, or vacation experiences.

You can expect a 5% base commission with numerous bonuses based on your performance. They send the payments via direct deposit or bank check monthly if your earnings reach $50.

You will receive newsletters with seasonal offers and new deals. Besides, the website provides you with dynamic widgets and search forms. Affiliates can generate links to any destination for flights, hotels, and vacation packages.

Expedia Affiliate Program: Commission

Expedia affiliate program’s commission varies from 2% to 6%. The lowest 2% commission is for car rentals and hotel bookings, and the highest 6% commission is for cruise bookings.

Expedia Affiliate Program: Travel Agents

Expedia also has a travel agent affiliate program for travel agencies located in the United States. It allows you to earn commission by offering your clients better rates and exclusive deals.

Travel agents may expect higher commissions than bloggers – it ranges from 3% to 11%. Moreover, you will get access to a dedicated call center and custom booking system to manage your bookings.

Expedia Affiliate Program: Pros and Cons

Pros:

  • Rich content support, competitive rates, and respectable commissions
  • Highly customized API for all affiliates
  • A market leader in the travel industry with worldwide name recognition

Cons:

  • Higher pricing for some destinations leading to sale abandonment
  • Lack of bonuses or points for repeat bookings
  • Affiliates are not allowed to promote Expedia via Twitter and Facebook

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TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor Affiliate Program: Overview

TripAdvisor, the most trusted travel community in the world, brings to you an easy-to-use, comprehensive affiliate program, which is more rewarding than its competitors.

However, it does not work like typical travel affiliate programs where affiliates get paid a small commission for promoting the company’s products or services. TripAdvisor allows you to earn up to 50% of the revenue generated from the clients you send.

TripAdvisor Affiliate Program: What Type Of Products Are Featured?

TripAdvisor is a platform that helps tourists find and compare offers from different companies (Booking.com, Agoda, Hotels.com, and many more). You may find deals on:

  • Flights: Different companies offer different prices for the same service. Therefore, it is essential to compare them to find the best deal. Using TripAdvisor, travelers may look through hundreds of flight sites, comparing them in terms of cost, stops, and travel time.
  • Restaurants: With a listing of over four million restaurants, TripAdvisor will find anything you want to eat – from street food to fine dining.
  • Hotels: You can save up to 30% on your hotel by comparing the prices between different platforms. TripAdvisor will do it for you.

TripAdvisor Affiliate Program: Commission Structure

TripAdvisor affiliate program offers its members a 50% commission of the revenue generated by the visitors sent by them. Besides, you may get great bonuses if your blog or website drives a certain level of quality traffic that generates revenue.

Tripadvisor Affiliate Program: Pros and Cons

Pros:

  • A popular website that millions of people use to find travel and booking offers
  • Hosted on trusted affiliate networks: CJ and Awin
  • Travelers from different countries can become members of the Tripadvisor affiliate program
  • Generous commission rate based on your performance
  • An extensive range of products and services to promote as a TripAdvisor affiliate
  • Numerous affiliate tools, including search widgets, buttons, banners, affiliate links, and more

Cons:

  • You need to go through an approval process to join the TripAdvisor affiliate program
  • The 14-day cookie duration is short compared to other affiliate programs
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Skyscanner Affiliate Program

Skyscanner Affiliate Program: Overview

With about 50 million users, Skyscanner is one of the most popular search engines for flights, hotels, and car hire. No wonder its affiliate program became so successful and now counts more than 1500 active members. Skyscanner affiliate program is an excellent opportunity for travel bloggers with quality traffic who want to monetize their blog or website.

Skyscanner affiliates can use text links, banners, or other tools to promote flights or car hire and get a 50% revenue sharing. Moreover, there are no restrictions on who may join the program.

Skyscanner Affiliate Program: Key Features

Skyscanner affiliate program offers the most useful affiliate marketing tools. For example, bloggers can use Travel Widgets, White Label, and API.

  • White Label

The fully branded white label is the best option for those affiliates who are looking for customizable tools.

  • Travel API

Travel API works best for those who are building their travel search capability. Skyscanner will make your life easier since it provides all the network support for the Travel API.

  • Travel Widgets

Travel widgets are an ideal tool for those who do not like using more complicated affiliate marketing tools. With Skyscanner, you can easily add the plug and play travel widgets to your blog or website.

Skyscanner Affiliate Program: Payments

When it comes to payments, you can choose one of the two available options: PayPal or bank transfer.

Skyscanner Affiliate Program: Pros and Cons

Pros:

  • Well known company
  • CPI for app install
  • Up to 50% commissions
  • The search engine is easy to use

Cons:

  • Low average commission
  • Skyscanner only pays the commission for Ireland, UK, and Spanish traffic

Travelocity Affiliate Program

Travelocity Affiliate Program: Overview

Travelocity also belongs to the most popular affiliate programs on the market. Over the years, this company has been expanding its product base, and now it includes numerous travel-related items, including:

  • Vacation rentals
  • Hotels
  • Flights
  • Trip ideas
  • Vacation packages
  • Activities and things to do
  • Cruise tickets
  • Car rentals and others.

Travelocity Affiliation Program: Commission Rate

Travelocity offers different commission rates depending on the service you sell. You may find the current commission rates below:

  • 3% Vacation Package
  • $30 Cruise
  • 2% Car Rentals
  • 3% Pay At Hotels
  • 6% Pre-Paid Hotels
  • $2 per Airline Ticket

The commission rates offered by Travelocity are comparable to other companies. Still, some of them are lower than standard. For example, you will get 6% for pre-paid hotels, which is pretty high, but if the client wants to pay at the hotel, you will get only 3%, which is below average.

Travelocity Affiliate Program: Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Banners are fun, colorful, and they easily catch the attention of your followers
  • Travelocity offers attractive discounts (both short-term and long-term) to publish on your blog or website

Cons

  • You cannot customize affiliate text links or banners
  • There is no instruction on how to use CJ Affiliate Portal specifically for Travelocity

Agoda Affiliate Program

Agoda Affiliate Program: Overview

Being one of the fastest-growing hotel booking platforms, Agoda.com, with its main headquarters in Asia and an increasing influence in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas, is a perfect choice for travel bloggers who are looking for an affiliate program.

Agoda Affiliate Program: Marketing Tools

Agoda affiliates may choose from numerous different types of marketing tools. Let’s take a closer look at them.

  • Search Box: This fully customizable tool is a useful addition to any website since it allows your visitors to search for hotels or other apartments directly from your blog.
  • Banners: Instead of being customized to a specific hotel, these banners give your clients a general overview of services provided by Agoda.
  • Image Link: The image link tool makes it possible to search for a specific hotel and view all available images. When the customer clicks on the image, it takes him to the hotel’s Agoda page where he can book it.
  • Text Links: Using text links or hyperlinks is also an efficient way to promote some specific hotels.

Agoda Affiliate Program: Commission

Your commission rate depends on the number of sales you do each month. It starts at 4% and may increase to 7% when your visitors make more than 1000 reservations a month.

Agoda Affiliate Program: Payments

Agoda pays directly to your bank account, but its setup often takes a few days to complete.

Agoda Affiliate Program: Pros and Cons

Like any other affiliate program, Agoda has several benefits and drawbacks, and it is essential to understand both before joining their affiliate program.

Pros:

  • Highly-customizable, comprehensive affiliate marketing tools. You may select specific hotels or apartments for each ad, change the background photos, adjust its size and position, and so on
  • High commission rate with many bonuses

Cons:

  • Agoda does not offer tours, flights, or car rentals like many other affiliate programs do
  • Affiliates only get their commission when the booking is complete

web traffic

Booking.com Affiliate Program

Booking.com Affiliate Program: Overview

There are hundreds of booking assistant websites on the market, but Booking.com is undoubtedly the most popular one. Its database contains thousands of partner hotels and apartments, land travel agencies, flight companies, and more. For this reason, the Booking affiliate program is an excellent way for any blogger to monetize his content.

Booking.com Affiliate Program: What Products It Features

Booking.com offers an extensive range of products ranging from accommodations to flights and all sorts of land transportation. They include:

  • Accommodations: This platform offers thousands of accommodation options, including hotels, apartment rentals, and house rentals, from all over the globe at affordable prices.
  • Car Rentals: Booking.com compares rates from different rental car sites and shows you the best available options.
  • Flights: Travelers can also search for flights on Booking.com. The platform combines all airline flights so you can see which option is the best.
  • Airport Taxi: You can use Booking.com to order an airport taxi or a shuttle bus – so you have a car waiting for you.

Booking.com Affiliate Program: Commission

With the Booking.com affiliate program, you will get 25% of the platform’s commission. It also varies from hotel to hotel, so it can be quite hard to predict how much you will earn.

Booking.com Affiliate Program: Available Tools

Booking.com offers a wide range of affiliate marketing tools. They include:

  • Banners: The banners are probably the most efficient affiliate marketing tool. Booking.com allows you to customize the shape and the size of the banner and to choose a specific theme.
  • Deals Finder: This widget finds the current deals in chosen locations and shows them to your visitors.
  • Links: Hyperlinks can help inspire your followers to go to a specified place (Hotel, Region, City, Airport, Island, etc.). They are quite efficient when you need to reference specific destinations or hotels.

Booking.com Affiliate Program: Pros and Cons

Pros:

  • Free and easy to sign up and use
  • No fees or startup costs
  • Exclusive banners and interactive search box

Cons:

  • You need to reach the 100 Euro limit to get your commission

Airbnb Affiliate Program

Airbnb Affiliate Program: Overview

Based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is the most prominent hospitality service in the world. This well-known company doesn’t own any hosting events or real estate listing; Airbnb acts as a broker that earns commissions from every booking.

When it comes to the Airbnb affiliate program, it is not that easy to become its member. They are looking for partners with very high traffic, consisting of no less than one million visits each month.

Nevertheless, bloggers who do not have so many visits can still join the Airbnb referral program, which is open to everyone. This program allows you to offer your guests a discount coupon on their first reservation. You get a flat fee each time new customer books and completes his stay.

Airbnb Affiliate Program: Payments

The members of the official Airbnb affiliate program may get paid out via electronic funds transfer (EFT) or PayPal. At the same time, the ‘Refer a host’ or ‘Invite friends’ affiliates can get their money via Payoneer, bank transfer, Prepaid Debit Mastercard, or PayPal.

Airbnb Affiliate Program: Pros and Cons

Pros:

  • Extensive program and promotion customization
  • Globally recognized brand revolutionizing the booking industry
  • High paying affiliate offers

Cons:

  • Built-in referral program competes with affiliates
  • The strict requirement of 1M+ monthly visitors

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many travel affiliate programs on the market. All of them have their pros and cons, but they all have one thing in common – you can make good money with them. Choose the right travel affiliation program for you and start monetizing your blog!

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Affiliate Disclaimer: In case you were in any sort of doubt, yes, I’m an Affiliate in some manner for some of these programs and products. I like to practice what I preach. If you are intending to utilise any of these offers I’d love if you went through one of these links to support my site.