The tourism industry has not yet really discovered ‘affiliate marketing’ and its real potential to grow tourism and business. Unlike its big brother, the online travel industry. And we want to change that!
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is:
- A type of performance-based marketing.
- Set up by companies (or persons) (so-called ‘merchants’ or ‘advertisers’) selling products and services; in our case it would be tourism providers selling offerings to tourists.
- Making use of ‘affiliate programs ‘ (advertising programs like on Booking.com).
- To which bloggers (influencers), website owners and other publishers (so-called ‘affiliates’) cab subscribe; even you if you have your own blog or website or social media channel can participate!
- And they are rewarded or paid based on performance when a specific action is completed or goal has been achieved; such as
- a sale (‘Pay-per-Sale’ or ‘PPS’), for example a booking of a room in your guesthouse; or
- a lead (‘Pay-per-Lead’ or ‘PPL’) or (‘Pay-per-Click’ or ‘PPC’); for example users subscribing to your newsletter or clicking on the ‘go to reservations’ button.
Affiliate marketing is very interesting for tourism providers and destinations. Not only for large corporations in tourism. But also and maybe especially for small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), including even the small ‘mom-and-pop’ businesses. You can help consumers to find bloggers and providers to sell your tourism offerings. By using affiliate links in blog posts or website pages. For the your tourism providers, the benefit is that they only have to pay for performance!
Affiliate marketing is one of the best opportunities to improve business in tourism. By applying the same affiliate marketing program principles to your own tourism business as used by big companies. Like Amazon, Booking or any of the big airlines or hotel chains are already doing now. You also have an excellent opportunity to grow visits and improve your sales. Even and especially also if you are a small or medium-sized business. in this blog we will show you how.