Affiliate Marketing to promote hotels?

Banned 12 years ago

Affiliate marketing is undoubtedly widely used to promote hotels. I think the general idea is that a discount is offered by booking online, through your site (i.e. with your affiliate cookie). Many hotels have affiliate schemes of various kinds.

There's an "issue" over payment, sometimes, when people find the details online but then call the hotel directly to book. It's possible to lose affiliate commissions through such "leaks". Many people are aware that if they find a specific price through a website, the hotel will (especially in this economy, with the travel industry suffering a lot) usually negotiate with them by phone or email, using the stated, verifiable website price as a "starting point".

I have little experience of it, myself, though I've previously promoted specific "travel packages" which included various hotel reservations.

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Dale_Anthony

12 years ago

I've never promoted hotels but affiliates must be making them money because hotels like the Marriott, Holiday Inn and The Hyatt have been on commission junction for a while now. And probably a few affiliate networks as well.

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gepisar 12 years ago

I do have interest in a holiday "hotel" in Spain. It seems to me that the fastest way to get it noticed was to use affiliates. Ive written the cookie tracking myself. Its a "self-service", self-catering deal and normally booking by phone would just result in redirection to the web site...since thats where the booking system is (Avoids double booking) - This would be my first step into entering a deal with affiliates. Would it be better to use an affiliate network or continue to rely on my own "home-made" affiliate tracking software? Which leads to another dilemma: cookie time. Too long and a single affiliate gets the benefit of a "burst" - too short and the affiliate might not receive appropriate compensation. Too long and again, other affiliates might get "locked out" from their efforts. Common sense suggest that 7 days, or 15 days might be appropriate, but too short for the affiliate. 90 days seems too long. Is there a magic number or is it vertical dependant - or a point of negotiation? Many thanks.
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Dale_Anthony

12 years ago

30 to 45 days seems fair for the affiliate. I think it's great you have your own tracking system. But if you don't join an affiliate network then it becomes your job to find affiliates.

With a network as long as you offer a competitive commission within your industry (The Marriott on CJ offers 5.50%...Holiday Inn 6%) then you have affiliates waiting but as a Merchant I believe you have to pay some money upfront to the affiliate network to join.

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Kajova 12 years ago

Hi John

Heard of lastminute.com ?

I've got a slightly cheeky way of using their top secret hotel booking to bank quick commissions..

How it basically works is you choose the destination, say London, and book a hotel, with up to 45% off the price - they don't reveal the hotel name until after you've booked

Now the the majority of these top secret hotels are 4* +

What you can do is run a low cost PPC campaign for a popular 2/3* in the London area, explain on your landing page how the top secret hotels offer works and that they're going to be getting a much nicer hotel for less, send them to lastminute.com - commission banked.

Adrian
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- gepisar 12 years ago
  
  Sure have heard of lastminute. And Trip Advisor and many others. Ive even enjoyed some stays in London using the "secret" discount. Like Dale points out, theres an upfront fee - and then youre in with everyone else. Im also wary of Trip Advisor - both good and bad things; its just one more thing to manage and Ive seen horror stories of the competition deliberately rubbishing competition. Whilst getting established i think its prudent to focus on the business first. Pros and cons i guess.The PPC campaign sounds nifty. I was wondering about the practicality of working with "home-brew" affiliates, like many here. I know the goal is to promote products that can be shipped by the millions and hit the "big time" - or at least have a steady income from multiple affiliate relations.
  
  Perhaps naively i thought that those with long twitter followers or huge fan bases would see an opportunity to promote. Could this work?
  
  Going to the lengths of creating a website, SEOing, and so on for the sake of commission on a single property seems overboard. After all, the website is already "done" -
  
  Hmmm....
  
  Thanks
  
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WeavingThoughts

12 years ago

That model is the most common. There are several affiliate portals which do this.

Thanks

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Kevin McNally

12 years ago

Hi John

It depends on a number of factors, is it your hotel ?

Most of the affiliate networks pay out anything between 2-5% to affiliates per booking. If you are the merchant you will have a transaction fee and set up fee on top of that.

You can save money setting up your own system but many of the top affiliates won't take the time to sign up and register if they already have lots of travel partners to promote.

If your traffic is mainly coming form the UK the most popular networks are

cj.com
tradedoubler.com
affiliatewindow.com
affiliatefuture.co.uk

And a few others. Sites like laterooms.com often have their own program and also appear in the affiliate networks.

Listing your hotel on trip advisor will generate more sales if you have good reviews but this takes time to build up. I think you also pay a fee if you want the ability to reply to any reviews, it's a clever business model !

Without knowing your hotel or area it's hard to tell the best route.

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gepisar

12 years ago

The deal with the hotel was one that fell in my lap. The owner had built several self-contained units onto the farmhouse hoping the kids would stay. But they all left for the "city". Hence he was a bit naffed off; He was going to sell it when i said off the cuff, "Let me market it"... and he has, and for a deal I just couldn't turn away. Tis in Spain, lovely place. Opening soon and all that. Is it mine... well, ive got the exclusive marketing rights...but Im not the legal owner.

Thanks for the UK links Kevin. I'll defo check into those. And thanks to all who've given guidance.

Thanks
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Kevin McNally

12 years ago

Originally Posted by gepisar

The deal with the hotel was one that fell in my lap. The owner had built several self-contained units onto the farmhouse hoping the kids would stay. But they all left for the "city". Hence he was a bit naffed off; He was going to sell it when i said off the cuff, "Let me market it"... and he has, and for a deal I just couldn't turn away. Tis in Spain, lovely place. Opening soon and all that. Is it mine... well, ive got the exclusive marketing rights...but Im not the legal owner.

Thanks for the UK links Kevin. I'll defo check into those. And thanks to all who've given guidance.

Sounds like you would be best building a website and promoting it yourself first to see how your conversion rate is ( ie people landing on your site who then book ).

You may want to add some extra stuff to stand out if you have some competing sites in the local area.

Something like Dine With Locals, meet local people as you travel! Exciting!

I lived in Malta for a while and a guy who owned a farm offered a local experience where he charged people for a farmhouse dinner which was simply his wife cooking dinner and it done well.

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gepisar 12 years ago

Website is done... it's the usual problem: low traffic. Its like a billboard at the bottom of the ocean! Got nearly 200 hundred twitter followers on the hotel twitter account. Looking to do an f/b page for it - I know these things take time!! Theres no budget for PPC though. Very low local competition. Prices are reasonable - but without higher traffic its hard to trust any feedback. Traffic, traffic, traffic... Many thanks to all for the great input.
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- Martin Gover 12 years ago
  
  I run a hotel, Craig y Nos Castle, and a year ago started creating multiple niche websites for different interest groups. I identified some niche groups (e.g. dog walkers - look on line for dog friendly wales in the UK) who would like to stay in my area. Also what towns and attractions are there nearby that would attract people to stay in your location? Is it worth creating location specific niche websites majoring on what there is to do and see in the area?
  
  You could possibly do the same as I have based on either an interest group (what sort of clientele does your property attract?) or a location (what sort of attractions are there nearby that would be worth promoting alongside your property - i.e. promote the attraction alongside a stay at the property?
  
  My dog friendly website is a traffic generator in its own right, coming to number 1 or 2 in google for reelvant niche searches such as 'dog friendly B&B in Wales' etc. This generates about £100k of B&B business from dog owners. My ghost site (most haunted castle in wales) is not so well SEO'd, but in winter I run a PPC campaign which gets a very high CTR and a very low Cost Per Click. This raises a further £50k in winter ghost tours (useful in the slow winter season). Four niche wedding offer sites collectively generate £700k of wedding business, though they are secondary sites and despite my best attempts, not well enough SEO'd to come to top organically. Traffic for the weddings niche is generated by CPC and the main castle site which is well SEO'd. Latter was not converting wedding enquiries to sale, but conversion to sale doubled when I created the niche wedding sites.
  
  So niche sites may have different functions - some can be well SEO'd as you delve down into a location specific niche interest, others with higher competition can be used as secondary sites with more info on them, to increase conversion to sale on traffic sent through from directory sites or Adwords etc. Since it costs nothing much to write and host a website, it can pay to create a half dozen completely different niche interest sites.
  
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JerrickYeoh

12 years ago

Ofcourse! You can see lot hotel agent or tourism agent create hotel booking site and earn money. Most of hotel do give minimal 10% of the booking fees to the agent as affiliate rewards.
If you working in this line , I'm sure that you know every hotel do provide the affiliate price to all the agent.
You can see agoda is also one of it .

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andrewpgpg 12 years ago

Originally Posted by gepisar

Im wondering if anyone has had experience marketing a hotel or if indeed affiliate marketing has been used successfully to help hotels book rooms? Many thanks.

I have just helped a friend setup a website for his hotel.

Basically the whole hotel industry in this world runs on affiliate marketing, with their affiliates often called "travel agent". Yes both of those old school travel agent or new-school "OTA" (online travel agent) such as Agoda are getting commission from every booking they are sending to the hotel.

Originally Posted by JerrickYeoh

Most of hotel do give minimal 10% of the booking fees to the agent as affiliate rewards.

Like Jerry said most hotel offer around 10% for agent/affiliate commission.

With Agoda the hotel decides how much % commission they are willing to pay Agoda. The higher the %, the more likely their hotel will be in the top of the list, so this is similar to auction.

Currently my friend's hotel offers 20%ish commission to Agoda which is about double the standard industry commission.. But they DO get lots of booking from these online travel agents!

So of course paying 10%-15% to YOU as an affiliate is a VERY VIABLE alternative for hotel. Both you and OTA are sending customers, but customer from you cost less for the hotel compared to customer from OTA. More affiliate like you means more profit in the bottom line
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Affiliate Marketing to promote hotels?

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