Travel affiliate programs are a high-income stream for businesses. For your success with travel affiliate marketing, you will need to know the best programs for your website. Therefore, you should keep an open mind towards these programs and learn to adapt to the best travel affiliate program(s) for your success.
With these programs, there is a possibility of netting over $30,000 annually. With many websites within the travel niche, this is not an easy task to successfully execute. Therefore, you could be within an A/B testing stage for a few years to learn the best placements and programs.
In this article, we will discuss some of the most efficient and highest-paying affiliate programs in the world. Also, we will take a deep dive into how they can make a consistent income. Furthermore, we will discuss the networks and their earning potentials according to the promotion standards we recommend.
You should note that no guarantee for it to be perfect. Even with years of testing, it’s not an ideal system. Therefore, you could spend months on your program before finding any consistency. So, you should use the earlier stages as a learning process for what you might come across. This article covers a lot of the problems you may face with each program. Consequently, you should pay close attention to its content.
Note that some affiliate programs may not work for you, depending on many factors. Therefore, you should be willing to adapt as any good entrepreneur must possess this quality.
10 Best Travel Affiliate Programs
1. Expedia
Expedia has a travel agent affiliate program (TAAP) that has a database of more than 500,000 hotels and over 400 airlines all over the world in major cities and countries.
When you’re signed up for this affiliate program, you will gain a wide range of exposure and increased possibilities for your success. This is due to the increase in your visits that will spawn from the program.
The commissions from the transactions through the affiliate links on your website will range from 3% to 12%. However, the type of transaction that occurs is what determines this percentage cut.
With Expedia, you can apply, and it will go through a reviewal process that gets determined by their customer support service. This will be done, and once you have received approval, you can utilize their affiliate program to make money on your website.
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An important thing to note is that Expedia is currently open only to US Travel agents. You can also use IATA, ARC, and True ID to sign up for Expedia.
Overview of Expedia Affiliate
The commission rates with Expedia can be from different ranges. We will provide some of these rates for your sales or transactions:
- Car rentals (Cost Per Transaction): 6%
- 5-Star Hotel Transactions (Cost Per Transaction): 9%
- Vacations (Cost Per Transaction):
- Hotel, Flight, Car Rentals or Hotel with a minimum of 3 nights (Cost Per Transaction): 5%
- Hotel, Flight or Flight, Hotel with a minimum of 3 nights and Car Rentals (Cost Per Transaction): 3%
- Expedia Premium Hotel Transactions (Cost Per Transaction): 11% for monthly hotel sales
- Activity transactions (Cost Per Transaction): 10%
- Regular Hotel Transactions (Cost Per Transaction): 3%
- Commissions of $50 will be deducted from your commissions on the 15th day of the month every month.
Advantages of Expedia Affiliate
- On Expedia, you get to take advantage of the world’s most extensive travel inventory. Therefore, there are ranges of choices for your audience to pick from. A directory of over 500,000 hotels and 400 major airlines will definitely have something for everyone.
- The platform is accessible and legitimate with useful optimizations that guarantee all your pay cuts up to 11% which makes it one of the best payout cuts on this list.
- Expedia has excellent customer service with a customer center dedicated to members of its affiliate program. Therefore, when you face any challenges or have any inquiries, you don’t have to worry about finding answers and solutions.
Disadvantages of Expedia Affiliate
- Expedia does not have a direct way to make your efforts. Instead, you have to use intermediaries such as AWIN and CJ.
- All customers have to experience the arduous process of validating their bookings to confirm their commissions.
- They only give API access to a select group of users. Therefore, there isn’t much in the way of customization options for your website.
2. TravelPayout Affiliate
Do you like to work in the travel niche? Then the Travel Payout program is the best option for you. When I come to know about this traveling industry a huge amount of dollar signs appear in front of my eyes. Making this amount of money is ridiculously high. TravelPayout is a powerful toolkit to make a wide range of search engines.
Specifically, there are three different search engines to promote your business. This is a bit of an odd feature when you will look for the first time. It is actually a teeny networking site which is the summation of three travel engines. This will scan all popular sites & will bring the result back according to your query. You can promote your affiliate program with the site JetRader.com, AviaSales.ru.& HotelLook.com.
JetRadar.com – This site is only for flight tickets.
AviaSales.ru. – This will provide you the hotel room details.
HotelLook.com. – With 728 airline details which are related European flights that you can use to develop your travel affiliate program.
JetRadar.com is the international aviasales edition that will support you with various currencies with a huge number of languages. They are only working on flights.
Hotellook.com is developing the search engine after they create JetRadar.com for flight purposes. Here you will find more than 250,000 hotel details within 205 countries. this app is using the language in both English & Russian. Only working for hotel rooms bookings.
Aviasales.ru is the first travel payout service based on the Eastern Europe flight search engine. This will offer travelers to compare their flight among 728 aircraft globally.
Travelpayouts Affiliate Network Commission Rates
| Category | Reward (% of Booking Cost) |
| Flights | 2%-3% |
| Accommodations | 2%-6.4% |
| Car Rentals | 2.4%-5.6% |
| Bus Transportation | 1%-8.3% |
| Train Tickets and Passes | 1%-6% |
| Tours and Activities | 2%-12.5% |
| Transfers | 6.5%-10% |
| Package Tours | 5% |
| Travel Compensation | 5-22 EUR |
| SIM-Cards | 5 EUR |
| Cruises | 50% Revenue Share |
| Bike and Scooter Rental | 4% |
Advantages and Disadvantages of Travelpayout
Advantage –
Here I will let you know the special things with travel affiliate marketing.
- A wide place to sell your service or product
- Without spending more time you can get tour authentic customers
- The affiliate site will provide you with reliable behavior without any extra cost.
- Get additional income source affiliate programs are the best platforms.
- No basic or sizable investment is required to start this business.
- Should not be worried about customer support or other related headaches.
- You are the boss of your own business to enjoy a luxurious life. Work here only for a few hours & can generate income for 24/7 hours. That doesn’t matter where you are located.
- You can maintain your business from anywhere with a laptop with an internet connection.
Disadvantage –
The things which have so many advantages may have some disadvantages also. This is very natural. So here I will describe some bad things about travel affiliate marketing.
- Possibility to incur a high amount of commission to maintain the affiliate facilitators or broker house.
- You may engage with a false community or a cybercrime group. The product or service can be completely wrong. If that happens, you can lose your potential customer also.
- Dishonest or the Unscrupulous merchant can close the business without informing you or without paying the commission to you.
- The merchant can offer you the alluring percentage for the first time. Then they can drop the commission rate within a week.
- Need to be careful about link hijack, they can get paid instead of your reposted link.
- To make the affiliates perturb there are many kinds of fake advertisements with false company names, logos & other information.
Having all those problems with affiliate marketing is still the best way to make money online. Doing some deep research you can avoid all those unwanted situations. By measuring the security option you can remove the disadvantages. To have a good result you also need to overcome the bad things also then enjoy the career of an affiliate marketer.
3. Booking.com Affiliate Program
With Booking.Com’s program, you can have over 40% commissions. This is utilizing ways one of the most sizeable commissions. Also, because a lot of people book lodges and accommodations online, there will be a lot of income towards your website.
You will earn over 25% on all bookings used, and this can increase if the person who books stays in the room longer. Also, all payments will be made utilizing PayPal, a month after the visitor has gotten through your referral and has carried out their full stay.
Advantages of Affiliate Program
- Booking.com receives a minimum of 1. 2 million bookings each day. Therefore there is a high risk of a large number of payouts for you.
- Also, Booking.com presents you with a massive range of promotional tools, so your advertisements are more effective.
- There is also a committed affiliate aid crew handy whenever you need help.
Disadvantages of Affiliate Program
- Commissions are obtained on the basis that works are based on the specific transaction the user carried out.
- You will have to exercise patience for your visitors to carry it out before you receive any form of payment.
4. Agoda
With Agoda, you can assist your subscribers to attain the best lodging in resorts and inns throughout the world. There are tens of millions of humans searching for this, so your platform will most likely acquire a lot of visits.
Also, Agoda will pay you an awful lot of 5% for every profitable transaction employing your affiliate link. Agoda also can pay you through PayPal and like Cruise Direct, these repayments will occur after one month. The minimum payment with Agoda is $200.
Advantages of Agoda Affiliate
- Agoda has access to properties and locations that are over 900,000 homes in the world which definitely consists of hotels, resorts, and many other accommodations, so there is usually something for your visitors.
- Agoda additionally gives you admission to a lot of statistics and information about these lodgings so your referrals can be content-based, consequently attractive to all your victors extensively.
- You will additionally get entry to a lot of custom-made equipment to assist you in making advantageous advertising and marketing campaigns
- There is additionally a devoted customer assistance and support platform for you.
Disadvantages of Agoda Affiliate
- The minimum payouts with this program are substantially higher than a lot of other programs on this list.
- A transfer fee of $10 is withdrawn from your earnings when you are making withdrawals.
- There is no straightforward communication of your commissions which makes the calculation process confusing.
5. STA Affiliate Travel Program
The STA affiliate travel program is pretty famous in the world and is generally used by way of travel bloggers with a focus on hotels and younger bloggers.
With this affiliate travel program, you will obtain and get admission to lots of flight and tour deals through their massive database and affiliate network.
You will be making up to 10% for tours, ISIC cards, and SIM cards as well as $4 for flights, confirmed commissions payout every month no longer minding the amount. There is no minimum payout threshold.
Advantages of STA Affiliate
- This platform is basically for students, instructors, or tour bloggers who are also students on a part-time basis.
- STA Travel gains a lot of traffic with over 3.6 million web page views per month and about 620,00 visits each month, so it is an excellent deal to be an affiliate with them.
- STA additionally has a devoted affiliate assist team handy every time you want their help
Disadvantages of STA Affiliate
- STA Travel Affiliate program is not necessarily as customer service-friendly as the other services on this list.
- Also, STA is not really known for a broad and extensive list of options for people to use. Therefore, most of the bookings you will find are for cheaper expenses due to the students that use the platform.
6. TripAdvisor Affiliate Program
TripAdvisor is a prevalent platform. For a good reason, its reputation as a network is due to the access users gain to a broad range of restaurants and travel bookings for their audience and userbase. TripAdvisor also gives its affiliate users up to an 80% commission for each of the transactions that occur through affiliate links. However, 50% of commissions are the standard with TripAdvisor. Similar to the other affiliate programs on this list, the payouts are a monthly ordeal through PayPal.
Advantages of TripAdvisor Affiliate
- TripAdvisor has a high reputation and is used all around the world by millions of people. As a result, there is a lot of influence and reach it has compared to some of the best travel affiliate programs on this list. TripAdvisor does this with some of the best travel deals in the world. Furthermore, with this program, you can join the TripAdvisor Affiliate list even if you live outside the U.S.
- TripAdvisor is also a useful resource for compiling relevant information that will help your platform and increase your earnings in the long run.
- Moreover, TripAdvisor gives its users exclusive access to ads in different forms such as text ads and banner ads which will increase the visibility of your campaigns.
- Lastly, there is a support team that is completely dedicated to helping with your inquiries and problems you may come across when you set up your travel affiliate program.
Disadvantages of TripAdvisor Affiliate
- It does not feature any form of direct payments in its system, which makes transactions a little extra work.
- TripAdvisor is not equipped with an extensive range of promotional tools.
- The connections with TripAdvisor are usually carried out through various intermediaries.
7. Cruise Direct Affiliate Travel Program
Cruise Direct’s Affiliate travel program gives users access to one of the best programs on this list. It features access to the use of affiliate links to the specialization of cruises or boats to spend vacations. These cruise vacations have different kinds of bookings. Also, you can gain a 3% commission for your sales through affiliate links which is quite a high sum.
Furthermore, there is a unique 45-cookie window for your website that will increase the earnings you receive for all your referral links.
Cruise Direct has a fast sign-up process that grants users access in under 24 hours from when you make an application.
There is a $25 minimum for the payouts with Cruise Direct, which is only a month after all the sales have confirmation. In other words, transactions made in August will be present in your account via PayPal in October.
Advantages of Cruise Direct Affiliate
- Cruise Direct is an excellent service because there are good deals readily available regularly for users. So, there is an extensive range of avenues to earn your profits with this service. So many newsletters and updates are received weekly with Cruise Direct.
- Cruise Direct also features many useful ads and promotional tools. Therefore, you can make great banner ads and landing pages for your website. Furthermore, you can still make good promotions in a hassle-free manner.
- Cruise Direct is great for another reason which is its ability to let you make promotions on your website or your social media account.
- The support service with Cruise Direct is also excellent for helping you ensure that your account is managed correctly.
Disadvantages of Cruise Direct Affiliate
- Cruise Direct is a tool that does not offer premium services compared to the others on this list.
- Cruise Direct is not as influential as the other affiliate program. Therefore, it is possible that it does not fully deliver on all the promises of its service.
8. Hotels Combined Affiliate Travel Program
Another significant and useful network for Affiliate networking is Hotel Combined. Hotels Combined gives users access to an extensive database of over 1.3 million different hotels from all over the world. The service does not offer car rentals, flights, or other travel needs, unfortunately.
However, many services offer Hotels with travel affiliate links. But, Hotels Combined has the best affiliate links on this list. Once you sign up for Hotels Combined, you have the potential to earn 50 cents to $2 for all the leads you channel toward their website.
Furthermore, when someone visits your website, there is a tracking system once they use your affiliate links. Therefore, for an entire year, there will be commissions if those users engage in multiple repeat visits to the Hotels Combined website.
All commissions will be processed for the length of a month and will get to your account after a month. Although there is a minimum of $100 that has to be within your payouts. All payments take place through the PayPal platform.
Advantages of Hotels Combined Affiliate
- Hotels Combined has a broad range of opportunities for income gains. This is great for users because you don’t even need to own a travel agency to use this service. The platform is excellent for travel bloggers, and because of the high demand, travel hotels are a unique business for affiliate marketing.
- Hotels Combined is one of the best travel affiliate programs because of its support which is always available, and it also has excellent customer consideration with the way it operates. There is a multilingual support team that helps users to handle problems in many languages other than English.
- The 1-year cookie attached to referral links is a great way to ensure that users always benefit from referrals which is a prime consideration for affiliate users of Hotels Combined.
Disadvantages of Hotels Combined Affiliate
- The statistics and earnings are quite difficult to compile and measure
- There is a high minimum payout rate with this service
9. Lonely Planet
Another one of these best affiliate travel programs is Lonely Planet. It is one of the largest travel guide publishers available worldwide. Being a part of this affiliate travel program can lead to high commissions for every travel guide, eBook, and booking advertised on your website with affiliate links circling back to Lonely Planet.
For all your print books, travel guides, and digital books, you will receive commissions ranging from 12% to 15%.
The commissions are varying stats that will change over time depending on some circumstances like the season. For example, during Christmas, commissions will always be higher.
At the end of the month, all payments are made to your account. There are more payment options with Lonely Planet compared to the other affiliate programs on this list.
Advantages of Lonely Planet
- With Lonely Planet, you can gain access to many promotional tools that increase the effectiveness of your affiliate links and website.
- There is a 1-month cookie that tracks referral link users for repeat purchases. If there are any repeat purchases, you will receive a commission.
- Lonely Planet has an extensive and useful support service with its customer service line.
10. Wego
Wego is a great platform that helps independent bloggers and travel agents from all over the world. With Wego, the transactions are not based on a sales or transaction basis. Instead, there will be payments based on a commission per click (CPC) basis. The fees with Wego are between 20 and 80 cents per click. The minimum threshold with this service is $100 for your withdrawable payments which are paid on the 15th and 20th day every month.
Advantages of Wego
- Wego is a service that is exclusive to travel bloggers and affiliate promoters. This is a service with a large range of travel-oriented programs and bookings.
- A customer service team is constantly available to users of the service.
Disadvantages of Wego
- The payouts take a long time to process. Sometimes, it takes up to two months.
- The API’s could cost over a thousand dollars yearly.
- If your traffic is of poor quality, you can get blocked from the service.
Within this list of the best travel affiliate programs, you will find many services that help users to find good deals on travel expenses. Meanwhile, owners of websites receive a great commission, therefore, all parties win when carried out successfully.
