Hotel affiliate programs

[beakertrail]

I have just been solicited by IHS (Interactive Hotel Solutions) to convert from IAN (Hotels.com).

Does anyone have any experience with IHS and how they compare to IAN?

My business is mainly americans and canadians booking travel to hotels in Canada.

[cornwall]

I looked at them a year or so back, but found it impossible to find out much about them. No address on their web site for example.

They are fairly pushy when they telephone you!

I decided against trying them because I was not happy on the contact information, and therefore not certain on getting paid.

[dcwps]

Does anyone have experience with lodging.com?

[old_expat]

"Does anyone have experience with lodging (dot)com? "

My 1+ year experience with them was all bad.

Hotel bookers in general seem to be either 1) sleazy, or 2) sleazy and only really interested in big players.;)

Examples:

"Loyalty programs" that won't pay the affiliate when user is coming from affiliate after a "loyalty" cookie has been set on a previous visit to the Booker's site.

"Loyalty" graphic links that are useless except for building PR and traffic to the Booker's website

Affiliate "managers" who are basically "emailamarketers" and seldom, if ever, answer questions.

Bookers who will pick you brain for ideas (via telecon), ask you to put your thoughts in writing .. then you never hear from them again.

Booker's with 800 contact numbers on landing pages (and no "discount code" showing)

[dcwps]

Tks.. will stay away from them.

[coconubuck]

IHS is a smaller company that doesn't have all the features (or collection rate) that IAN has. I don't know that their pricing is necessarily better than IAN's either.