Booking.com Affiliate Program
If you are a blogger or website owner in the travel niche, it’s probably safe to say that 2020 wasn’t your year. However, toward the end of 2020, travel started to pick up again, with people looking to book remote chalets or even rooms at hotels that stick to the health and hygiene recommendations currently in place.
But as anyone knows, the epidemiological situation in 2020 is going to end at one point, and niches like travel will start to thrive again. If you’re looking to monetize a travel blog or site and you don’t know where to start, check out our review of the Booking.com affiliate program.
Booking Affiliate Program
1. Booking.com affiliate commission rates
The Booking.com affiliate program offers 25% in commissions to its affiliates, but it might be confusing for marketers who haven’t read the so-called ‘fine print.’ You don’t actually earn 25% of the value of one booking.
You do, however, earn 25% of what Booking.com’s commission would be if you weren’t to be the intermediary of the transaction. The bad news is that it’s not a lot, especially in the beginning, as in most cases, Booking takes about 15 to 20% of the value of someone’s stay.
So, let’s suppose someone pays $200 for a stay at a B&B. Booking.com will get 20%, so they’ll make $40. Out of the $40, you get 25%, which means you’re getting $10. Is that a lot? Is that not enough? That’s only for you to say, but the fact is that the Booking.com affiliate commission is better than that of other, similar programs.
On average, when they go on holiday, people book hotel rooms for at least $250, and if your blog or site’s getting enough traffic, you have a pretty good chance of making enough with Booking.com.
Plus, if you intermediate more than 50 bookings a month, your commission rate becomes 30%. If you do the same for more than 150 a month, your rate’s 35%, while for more than 500 it’s going to be 40%.
2. Payments
You can be paid through direct deposit (in several different currencies from Euros and British Pounds to US Dollars) or Paypal. For Paypal, since Booking.com is located in the Netherlands, you are always going to be paid in Euros. Naturally, you can withdraw the money to your bank account in whatever currency you prefer, but that’s what you’re going to be paid.
Direct deposits are also processed in Euros, but if you want to be paid in US dollars or pounds, you can simply get in touch with the Booking.com representatives and make a request in this sense.
As for when you get paid, here’s the tricky part. You need to make at least 100 euros (about $110-$120) in order to transfer your money into your Paypal account.
3. Pros and cons
One of the first benefits of this affiliate program is that anyone can sign up and get access to the promotion tools. Booking.com is a huge website that literally has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of properties listed, so you don’t have to worry about your readers not trusting the brand.
On the other hand, there are affiliate marketers who feel like the program would be better if the commission rates were higher, too. But it all depends on your conversion rate, how good your content is, and the amount of traffic you’re getting. And of course, no one can predict when the next pandemic is going to happen.
The 100-euro threshold can be a con for some people, especially those that aren’t getting a lot of traffic.
4. How can Booking.com’s affiliate tools help?
There are a variety of tools that a Booking affiliate can benefit from, and here are several examples:
- A regular search box – you can add a custom-sized Booking.com search box to your website and let your visitors look for whatever stays they might be interested in
- An ‘inspiring’ search box – which is the same but looks better than the first
- Affiliate links – to any place from cities and hotels to landmarks, regions, and even airports
- Banners – that you can place anywhere on your website
- Deals finder – which works by showing your site visitors customized deals based on the web page or post they are reading (for example, they’re reading an article on your site about California, they’ll see deals in this state)
On top of that, there are several plugins for WordPress sites that you can use if you are a Booking affiliate marketer.
5. Is it worth it?
We’d say that the money that you could make with this affiliate program is pretty decent, but you could use several extra networks, too.
Travel blogs and websites can always market other types of products, too, not just services — for example, actual physical products such as hiking backpacks, suitcases, portable water bottles, and a variety of other such items.
You could join Amazon Associates or the Walmart affiliate program, or even Wayfair, although it carries just a couple of thousand travel-related products by comparison. So long as you don’t put all your eggs in one basket, Booking.com is a good way to make some passive income.
Want to learn more about affiliate marketing and SEO? We have several different plans available and we offer consultancy online. Get in touch today.
Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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