Forum Moderators: skibum
I am starting a canadian travel site and was wondering which affliate to go with...any suggestions?
I was thinking of travelnow or expedia...what do you think?
TravelNow have not exactly been prompt at replying, but at least I have been able to conduct a dialogue with them
Most of these big companies are bad at replying, but basically Expedia go that little step further and do not bother at all :(
I gave up on them in the end!
thanks for your feedback. what else can you tell me about expedia? I did notice that their hotel rates are better when compared to travelnow...I am leaning to expedia unless I can be convinced otherwise. :)
Well, not sure how long this one will last, but I am using ian.com and they are pretty good. Very fast response time and easy to use. Travelnow.com is part of ian.com, check it out.
The way of the world is that nobody is going to post this hard earned information here in terms of who is the "best".
A list of the factors to consider, that is not necessarily a full list , is
1. Percentage of hotel rate that you actually get. Taking into account the various "adjustments" that can be made for "booking fee" and the like that appear in the small print. In other words compare apples with apples, not apples with pears
2. The conversion factor. In other words of those that click the link, what percentage book. The amount of back up on say a phone line will influence, plus the users perception of the viability of the booking they are making, influes the likihood of them actually making the booking off your site.
3. The commission recovery rate that is obtained from hotels. Nobody tells you too much about this. But the have to recover the commission from the hotel before they can pay you
4. The cancellation rate. Again varies greatly, but no point in getting bookings if the half of them cancel. Some of the schemes have horrendous cancellation rates, and I have never been able to work out why
5. The length of time they take to pay you. Often months
6. Minimum payment figure if you think that is a problem (ie they will not pay you until the payment due to you is above $X), and method of payment(ie if it is a foreign currency, the conversion cost)
7. What are the chances of them reneging on paying you at all.
8. The quality of the hotel stock they hold. In other words they have little spats from time to time with hotel groups and no longer operate with them. Expedia are parting company with InterContinental Hotels Group at the moment (Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza). IAN do not appear to have any Hilton hotels
9. The quality of support you get from their help lines. Most are bad, some are worse! One large European hotel group owe me a four figure sum, but just do not reply to emails. We are not in dispute, just not in communication
From reading this forum for a number of years, it is unlikely that anyone will give you a definitive answer to your question. No openly available research appears to exist that answers my points above
The way you have to learn about is is to experiment with a number of the schemes, then compare the results on your own sites. Not a bad thing really :)
