The 21 Best Hotel Affiliate Marketing Programs in 2023 (+ one AI solution)
Monetization and Travel Affiliate Programs
Feb. 10, 2022
Here we will be covering the best Hotel affiliate programs for you. Although it is said that the affiliate program is a very competitive market, affiliate programs continue to be one of the best ways to boost revenue.
The “Online Hotel booking” trend keeps growing year after year, with revenue of hundreds of billion dollars yearly.
According to statista.com, at least 148 million hotel travel bookings are made each year online. The challenge for travel bloggers and influencers is to connect their audience with the perfect stay. Joining the right hotel affiliate programs will make it easier for you to market hotels on your website or other means of communication. On your Instagram account, it could be as simple as adding a swipe-up link to a story where you are showing the hotel room where spent your night. On your website, you could add a web widget that will show the best hotels around a destination.
On a more advanced level, you could also access the APIs of these online accommodation providers to dynamically display their content on your website and scale your affiliate marketing strategy to multiple web pages automatically.
In this article, we recommend you the 21 best Hotel Affiliate programs in 2022 to help your travel company to offer the best hotels to your customers, users or followers.
1. Booking.com Affiliate Program
- Commission: 25% to 40% of Booking.com’s commission
- Cookie Duration: 0 Day
Booking.com is a really well-known brand for hotel bookings but also for its hotel affiliate program. The integration of their affiliate tools and their hotel listings is supported for 43 languages. The program is easy to use and provides 6 different booking widgets that you can use on your website to create a better hotel booking platform.
One of the cons of this affiliate program is the Zero day cookie policy which mean that you will need to drive very qualified trafic to Booking.com in order to generate bookings. The payout structure can also seem difficult to understand at first and their affiliate dashboard is not the most optimized for the end-user.
Here is how their affiliate payout structure works:
- Between 1 and 50 bookings per month: 25% commission of Booking.com revenue
- Between 51 and 150 bookings per month: 30% commission of Booking.com revenue
- Between 151 and 500 bookings per month: 35% commission of Booking.com revenue
- Over 500 bookings per month: 40% commission of Booking.com revenue
How to promote hotels automatically with AI ?
1 - Use ChatGPT to add affiliate links automatically
We have developed a widget builder that will allow you to integrate ChatGPT as a travel assistant to your website easily. It will generate a customized travel plan for any user and will automatically add links to hotels from booking.com with your own affiliate ID. You can try it now here
2 - Use an image recognition WordPress plugin
To take full advantage of the Booking.com Affiliate program, you will need to maximize the number of clicks that you generate from your website. A good way to do so is to write travel articles about a specific destination and to add booking buttons above your most beautiful pictures that will redirect to hotels nearby. This widget has been developed using the Booking.com API
We have developed a web plugin for WordPress in order to do this easily. Install it on your travel blogs to connect all your pictures, then go to your dashboard. There you will be able to add locations to your pictures and we will suggest you affiliate links of hotels on Booking.com to promote
👉 START FOR FREE - MAKE YOUR TRAVEL PICTURES INTERACTIVE AND INCREASE YOUR CLICKS
2. Agoda Affiliate Marketing Program
- Commission rate: 3% to 7% of the total booking value
- Cookie Duration: 30 Days
Agoda is one of the well-known Hotel affiliate programs. The best thing about Agoda’s affiliate program is its simple tracking system to monitor the traffic you send and to view the details of each booking and payouts. They allow a wide range of traffic sources. The more you move up the ladder in Agoda’s program, the more reward points you receive. However, there’s one disadvantage with this program. The payout is sent only after the guest checks out of the hotel so it can sometimes be an inconvenience. Also, the minimum checkout is set at $200.
3. Hotels.com Partners Program
- Commission rate: 4% of the booking value and 1% for gift cards
- Cookie Duration: 7 days
Hotels.com is a strong brand name as a hotel affiliate program as well as a hotel booking website. It is part of the Expedia group and has competitive rates for all destinations and budgets. Also the approval rate for joining this program is very easy. One of the problems is that the platform is available for affiliates only via third-party services. They also have a special payout condition when users enter a Welcome Rewards voucher or uses a promotional code for booking its hotel. The revenue you will receive will be lower.
4. Tripadvisor for Travel Bloggers and Influencers
- Commission rate: 4% of the booking value
- Cookie Duration: One day
Tripadvisor is one of the best travel affiliate programs for hotel bookings but also for tours and activities since they have bought the website viator.com with all its catalog. You can read more about the most popular travel and tours affiliate programs on our other article . The Tripadvisor affiliate program provides to their partners real-time reporting which is available around the clock. They also offer quarterly incentive programs for extra revenue and use the PPC method so the users make money easier. The catalog of Tripadvisor is filled with 500,000 hotel pages to reference. The only concern is that the program is only available through other affiliate networks.
5. Hostelworld Affiliate Program
- Commission rate: 40% of the deposit price
- Cookie duration: 30 Days
The Hostelworld affiliate program comes with a 19 language option feature. The best part about this program is that you will be approved to it easily even if you still do not have a website or a minimum amount of traffic. It will also be great to promote their hostel to younger travelers such as backpackers who will be more sensible to cheaper and more social stays. One of the issues with Hostelworld affiliates is that customers only pay for the deposit which usually a small amount pay the rest of the booking directly to the hotel. They also have a minimum $200 threshold for a payment to be made and it is also available only via bank transfer.
6. Expedia Affiliate Marketing Program
- Commission rate: 2 to 6% of the booking value
- Cookie Duration: 7 days
Expedia group is one of the biggest players in the travel industry. The Expedia affiliate program helps the affiliates with promotions of their special offers, which can potentially be a good marketing opportunity. The program will give you access to other travel brands such as Hotels.com, Vrbo, Travelocity and Ebookers. One of the disadvantages of Expedia's partners program is that their commission rates are quite low.
7. Marriott Affiliates Marketing
- Commission rate: 4% to 6% on hotel stays, 3% on vacation packages
- Cookie Duration: 7 Days
Marriott is one of the most well-known hotel brands in the world and their affiliate program also has a strong brand with 3900 hotels in 72 countries. The hotel affiliate program of Marriott provides a better commission rate than similar affiliate programs. Also, their premium packages bring in a bigger commission rate. The program has a few disadvantages like they have only bank transfers available. They also have a strict requirement for the website’s design and content.
8. Accor Hotels Affiliate Program
- Commission Rate: 2% to 10%
- Cookie Duration: 7 days
Accor Hotels are another well-known Hotel brand that also provides hotel affiliate programs. Their program is very detailed information on the company’s site covering every issue. They also have a mobile version for users of the Accor hotels affiliate program. Their issue is that they have a very complicated payout system.
9. Travelpayouts for Travel Bloggers and Influencers
- Commission: Up to 12%
- Cookie Duration: 0 Days - 365 Days
Travelpayouts put in one place all the best travel affiliate programs for flights, hotels, stays, car rental, travel insurance, tours, and activities. They provide travel websites and bloggers a dedicated support service as well as a wide range of tools and widgets to create your own search engines and booking system. The only issue we could find was that some in-house affiliate programs will offer higher rates if you sign directly with them.
10. Red Roof Affiliates
- Commission rate - 3%
- Cookie Duration - 30 days
The Red Roof affiliate program comes with detailed reports and customizable links. Budget hotels are easier to sell on this program. Their website is only in English and there are also no commissions on group bookings from 10 up to 12 rooms.
11. Hotelscombined Partners Program for affiliate marketing
- Commission rate: 50 cents to $2 per click depending on your sales
- Cookie Duration: 1 year
The HotelsCombined affiliate program is part of the Kayak affiliate network and comes with well-developed tools such as an API. You can signup directly on the Kayak affiliate portal to access the Hotelscombined catalog without verification. The great thing about this program is that the cookie duration is 365 days and you will get paid even if the user didn’t end-up booking an hotel. However, after a while, if most of the users that you sent didn't convert, the money you will get for each clicks could decrease significantly. They have a minimum $500 payment threshold which is a high amount and their payouts are also only in dollars.
12. NH Hotel Group affiliate program
- Commission rate: 10% commission for sales after clicks and for managing bookings they offer monthly payouts without additional charges.
- Cookie duration: 30 days
The NH Hotel Group affiliate program gives partners full tutorial support via a personalized service. There are also plenty of regular promotions for your engagement. There is a lack of luxury hotels and your formal identification as a travel agent is required.
13. Choice Hotels Affiliate Marketing Program
- Commission rate: 2% to 6% of the booking value
- Cookie Duration: 7 days
The Choice hotels affiliate program accepts partners from any country. They also have loyalty programs with choice privileges. The problem is they don't have a product catalog.
14. World Nomads Affiliate Portal
- Commission Rate: 10%
- Cookie duration: 60 days
Alongside an hotel booking, you could also see to your users much need travel insurances. The World Nomads affiliate program is a great program. The affiliates ate not required to sign onto fixed-term contracts and World Nomads also does not cap your earnings, making them one of the most flexible options. The affiliates are also provided with their free travel guides that are a really useful tool.
15. Travelocity Affiliate Program
- Commission Rate: 2% - 4% Per Sale
- Cookie Duration: 45 days
The Travelocity affiliate program is one of the websites that keep it real. Their interface is easy and very authentic. Their low-price guarantee to customers really came first, lowering the commission rate.
16. Anantara Resorts Affiliate Marketing
- Commission Rate: 5% Per Sale
- Cookie Duration: 30 Days
The Anantara Resorts affiliate program does not have any minimum requirement to become its affiliate. They also have ready-to-use offers, top-notch banner ads, text links, and voucher codes.
17. Hotellook Affiliate Program
- Commission rate: 5% on completed reservation
- Cookie duration: 30 days
The Hotellook affiliate program platform offers different kinds of promotional tools like search forms, Whitelabels, banners, link generators, widgets and landings. They also have a database that contains all the hotels that are present on other sites.
18. Hilton Affiliate Partners Program
- Commission Rate: 4% of the hotel booking value
- Cookie Duration: Unknown
The Hilton Hotel affiliate program is reliable & has easy tracking and payments. It offers a range of tools to help you develop a program tailored specifically for your target market and geographical location.
19. Sirenis Hotels & Resorts Affiliate Program
- Commission Rate: 6% Per Sale
- Cookie duration: 30 days
The Sirenis Hotels & Resorts affiliate program provides all-inclusive and self-catering resorts, over 35 years of hotel experience with great commission rates. It also gives access to a wide variety of creatives, promotional codes, and state-of-the-art affiliate tools.
20. Airbnb Associates Program
Airbnb allows you to rent entire homes and private rooms from local hosts in over 190 countries. They have recently closed their affiliate program however they still offer a reward system for their partners.
Airbnb offers a win/win referral system. By referring new users to Airbnb, you earn up to €25 in commissions for each active user, from their first booking. Your referrals will receive €34 in free travel credit. They can in turn refer their friends and earn free credits on Airbnb.
Airbnb's referral program also allows you to refer guests. You will receive 90€ of travel credit as soon as your host makes his first reservation.
21. Tripaneer Affiliate Program
Tripaneer focuses on travel experiences and retreat. You can choose to promote their different packages from mindful yoga retreats, adventurous safaris, epic surf camps, and more.
The commission you will receive from the affiliate program is a percentage of the commission Tripaneer receives for the booking. The more bookings made via your website, the higher the commission share becomes. The commission share is set monthly, according to the number of finalized bookings per month you have sold. It follows this structure:
0-50 bookings: 35% commission share
51-100 bookings: 40% commission share
101-250 bookings: 45% commission share
250+ bookings: 50% commission share
You have now been given 21 Best Hotel Affiliate Programs in 2022 to work with. These affiliate programs are guaranteed to make you some money if you manage to send them qualified traffic that is actually interested in booking a hotel. Just remember that not all affiliate links are created for the same purpose. Do not hesitate to go through the list thoroughly and read more about all the Hotel affiliate programs that have been mentioned in this article to know which is the best for you.
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