Hotel Affilates

Conversion rate dropping

[gosman]

Anyone using one of the large hotel affiliate programs finding in the last 2 months that conversion rate has dropped?

[LifeinAsia]

Dropping for months as more and more and more affiliates signup and potential customers find out that your links go to the same places that hundreds of thousands of other affiliates go to.

That and the fact that the summer vacation season ended. So a lot more people doing research these days for later vacations, but not booking right now.

[jimbeetle]

So a lot more people doing research these days for later vacations, but not booking right now.

Yep, my hotel traffic is actually up right now, reservations down. Pretty normal for this time of year, at least for my sites.

[Receptional]

Pretty normal for this time of year

Very much so - at least in the northern hemisphere. I am in the UK and the peak time for holidays is July and August when Kids are off school. That means that the holidays were booked BEFORE July and August of course. During that time, business bookings also go down because the secretaries are on holidays as well. Infact - for non-business travel, you can now expect an upturn from Boxing day... pretty much the way travel works. Christmas ends and people start thinking about their summer holiday.

[edited by: Receptional at 4:25 pm (utc) on Sep. 14, 2006]

[cornwall]

Yes, I am weith the majority on this.

My converson rates and my monthly cheques from my hotel booking sites have been falling steadily for months.

[gamiziuk]

Ditto.

The travel business online is very "seasonal." Now is a great time of year to put Adsense or YPN on your travel sites.

[cvas]

Same thing here no bookings so far this month. I thought it would have something to do with recent changes at adwords and landing page quality score. Apparently there are some changes affecting affiliates using adwords.

[idolw]

i am seeing the growth in both number and commission value.

[idolw]

The travel business online is very "seasonal." Now is a great time of year to put Adsense or YPN on your travel sites.

not putting that and waiting for people to use bookmarks works better for me.

[gosman]

Let me clarify. Taking in to account seasonal adjustments has anybody found that a paticular large hotel affiliate program is now converting less than say it was in previous years.

Still sending the same traffic generated from the same keywords but they are converting at a lot lower rate.

[LifeinAsia]

Same response as my original response, minus the second paragraph.

Add: If you mean just with a specific affiliate program, no one can give you details for that particular program unless you say which program it is. Which you probably shouldn't do since it would probably be against the ToS.

[bobothecat]

Traffic is down about 20%, but sales for this month are up 35% from this time last year - go figure.

[gamiziuk]

If you mean just with a specific affiliate program, no one can give you details for that particular program unless you say which program it is. Which you probably shouldn't do since it would probably be against the ToS.

The hotel affiliate business has changed so much in the past year, that I do not see how anyone can make a comparison from 2005 to 2006. I deal with 4 different providers of hotel reservations. I try to give each one their own web site (domain), or at least give each one a /folder/ when a separate domain is not practical.