Yes yes yes.

But I think you should define the difference (if you were going to ban them) between an affiliate site that is content rich – and one purely made to “game” search engines and slice a section of the traffic.

Having worked for a number of leading travel companies…. many of these affiliate sites are actually former employees of some of the best known brands…. some are even current employees! (Not sure that is right either – but I think that is an employer / employee issue – not a trade one!)

Sometimes the employees were runnng affiliate sites with the full knowledge (and de facto permission) of the travel company – because then it kept the travel company name out of any mess that is caused….

Alex

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Darren
I am right behind you with your thoughts

Why don’t you put up a post and challenge anyone to come up with a sensible use for travel affiliate marketing! (i.e. we all know that affiliate marketing makes good business sense – but what does it do to the industry as a whole)… probably more of an article for Mr May though….

Alex

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It’s a good point you raise Darren, though doing anything about it could be tricky — there’s an awful lot of shades of gray out there. If the content is unique and useful and there’s no misleading going on, then it doesn’t strike me as being too problematic.

However, I do agree that something like a website missrepresenting themselves as being an ATOL member is a clear case of fraud — shouldn’t ATOL be doing something about those type of abuses anyway?

As you say a degree of responsibility comes down to the travel companies who promote their goods/services on the legion of affiliate packages available — twas they who created the beast…

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Our thoughts, as requested by Alex of TourCMS, and greatly anticipated by Darren I suspect

http://travolution.blogspot.com/2007/04/should-industry-really-ban-affiliate.html

A brilliant issue for people to get their teeth into. Well done Darren for bringing it up…

klm, ed, travo

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Darren,

With respect, I think you are missing the point.

You wrote…
“Surely travel companies need be keen to keep an eye open on affiliate sites, to protect it’s own brand?”

But what I was trying to point out is that a number of these “spammy” affiliate sites are acutally run by the travel companies themselves (perhaps by their staff as personal projects)….. with the entire purpose being that they can say “nothing to do with us” – which does protect the brand….

No blame for SEO, doesn’t matter if a site gets banned etc….

Remember the affiliates mantra “Exit forwards”. Doesn’t matter if the website is so bad that the user wants to leave immediately….. as long as they leave forwards (rather than the back button)

Alex

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I certainly agree that ABTA, ATOL etc logos should only be displayed on the web pages of the companies who actually hold the licence.

I have affiliate links on my travel website. They are how I make an income from my site. Most of them are links to the hotel affiliate schemes with Active Hotels, Venere and Laterooms. The affiliate links are in the “where to stay” section in my destination guides. I spend a lot of time researching and writing my guides to less well known destinations in Europe and I need to have financial compensation for this.

The main reason I’ve started to use more affiliate links is because they offer instant real time availability and booking to my website visitors. At first when a potential customer made a enquiry, I would receive an enquiry form, then contact the supplier to ask about availability, then get back to the customer. It was very slow, so I decided to use more affiliate links, although I get less commission from them than dealing directly with the supplier, it;s a lot simpler and easier for me and the customer.

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I’m an holidaymaker.

I am glad that someone is looking out for consumers.

Darren, can you not give examples of the type of site you think should be ‘scrapped’?

This might back up your comments and blog post.

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An absolutely fascinating debate…

A question: Who will decide which sites should be scrapped? Who is going to police that process?

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Taking Rohan’s point (from the consumer perspective) – affiliates do serve a positive purpose for consumers – in that they assist consumers to find products that the original vendor (normally a hotel chain, tour operator or OTA) have not successfully managed to promote online. (or who don’t have the resources to reach into the niches that their products can do in the hands of an affiliate website)

For example if you have 100 hotels in Cornwall that you have set up an affiliate scheme. You can then resell (with small commission) to the niches – such as surfers (on surfer websites), people visiting Eden (on the Eden website) etc… This is the theory anyway. In practice (and the affiliates we are discussing) – are the spammy sites designed with search engine optimisation in mind – that serve no purpose than to skim a little percent here and there.

Final thought…. go plus 10 years. Probably no travel agents and just loads of affiliates…. so scrapping them may be a little premature ….. and by that time ABTA will stand for Association of British Travel Affiliates….. maybe this is why they are reorganising!

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First Resort are owned by the TUI group, and therefore required to use the ABTA number under ABTA rules. TUI are legally responsible besides.

As for affiliate schemes, I agree that there are a lot of sites out there that don’t help the consumer in any way. However affiliate networking is huge, and companies such as Tradedoubler, Affiliate Window, Commission Junction, and Affiliate Future can act as a medium of control over this, though they do not always do so.

For affiliates, it’s all about making revenue. Whether the sites are cost per click sites or have commission-based contracts. Some of the biggest names in price comparison are essentially cost-per-click affiliates: Moneysupermarket.com run sites such as travelsupermarket.com, operating on a CPC basis. Thus the onus is not on promoting the company that provides the best service, but on getting as many clicks as possible. Another example here would be cheapflights.co.uk, who make the consumer click on as many results as possible before making their purchase.

On the other hand, carhiresearch.co.uk operates a commission-based comparison site. The sale is what’s important here. In general though, comparison sites are of high importance to consumers, as they set the big companies against each other, beating the prices down, and with most of these companies quality is high anyway. There is another post about this here however (see early March), so I’ll leave it there.

To zone in on the affiliate question, we must accept that there are always going to be those sites that are only there for the money, however, scrapping them altogether would lose us the benefits of focussed affiliate sites such as corsica-holiday.com, austrianbreaks.com and golf-player.co.uk, all who are content rich in their own fields, and use affiliate schemes to support the site financially with relevant companies.

I don’t think it makes sense to scrap affiliate sites altogether, as they are clearly of benefit, however I do agree that travel related companies ought to control their partnerships better. This however is not always easy for an affiliate account manager overlooking a few hunderd affiliate accounts. It is however of benefit to a company that their affiliate manager interacts with affiliates to ensure that the brand is not being soiled by sites that are clearly not making any effort to provide an honest product to the customer.

I’ve gone on long enough, despite that I could go on and on…!

Oisin

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Like Rohan I am a holidaymaker, and I would class myself as someone who is inexperienced in using the internet for booking holidays. I find some websites are not user friendly, but I do not know if these websites are the types of sites Darren has mentioned.

I read this site a lot, and I do think that travel companies, especially online ones, think hat we are all experienced in using the internet, and assume.

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Hey Darren,
Longtime no talk…
I’m totally with you on that one. I started using that same affiliate program and had the same issues with the competition concept. I don’t know if i agree with “scraping them” so to say, but some sort of regulation or subdued effort would be nice. I, like you, have never really found a content-rich affiliate site, but maybe that’d change my mind.
Sincerely,
Matt

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[...] estos días, en Estados Unidos e Inglaterra hay un muy interesante debate, en blogs como Travel-Rants o Travolution sobre si se deben o no prohibir las páginas web de [...]

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I’m also discussing this issue at my blog, but happens to be in spanish. Nobody is mentioning the effect og Affiliate sales on intermediation cost for hotels. I do care for hotels when distributing their inventory through merchant sites, that need to lower their net rates and mark-up their selling prices in order to have enough margins to pay affiliates and still making money.

Finally, the affiliate fees are paid by hoteliers.

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Hi I stumbled across this blog and read the discourse with interest. I tend to agree with Google (on this issue, anyway!) in that sites should, by rights, bring added value to the user experience. In an online environment where users are becoming increasingly ‘banner-blind’, visiting a site which just has loads of banners and adds no real use to the user experience tends to be a frustrating experience. Far better to visit a site which has unique content, a genuine raison d’etre, and useful to the user’s search intentions. If that means some affiliate links are present which are relevant and that the user would find useful, then more the merrier. There are numerous sites which have superb content and the affiliate links complement this rather than detract from it.

The forced pop-up/banner farm type sites however, I agree with you that perhaps these should not be encouraged.

I enjoyed the blog, thanks!

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Hi Darren,

Well, Travel companies should care. It is still up to the hotels to decide who they want to benefit to competitive rates or not. Merchants will then consider if contracting super-net rates, and marking-up their rates a 25% to cover affiliate distribution fees, is still a competitive advantage.

Best Regards,
Albert

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[...] as in most cases hotels would be competing with their own intermediaries or their affiliates. But this issue is being discussed at other [...]

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please please lets define the legal process.
an affiliate is the advertiser of a travel agent.
so as an advertiser he/she can add that the travel /tour operator has an abta or atol or iata licence.
it is much much safer than the old high street bucket shops.
how can anyone loose monies through an affiliate?
the affiliate receives a commission from the travel company.
the client pays direct the travel company.
if anyone is going to do something wrong to the customer is the travel/tour operator and not the affiliate.
For your information
in May 2007 a study was complete on behalf of an international organisation called TTW
what the findings were is that the customer finds an affiliate site dedicated to travel very helpfull.
Rather than typing various words so to find the right flight or the right holiday etc the affiliate site will contain the information in one site only.
Please ask the customer first what they prefer before you criticise a system which helps the travel industry and is helpful to the consumer

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Hi there!

I am a student doing a research on affiliate programme for online travel agencies, and would be very pleased if someone could recommend me an affiliate site that mostly advertise travel agents/products.

Many thanks and best wishes,
Jas

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A very bold, quite negative generalisation! I seem to agree with John. I travel a LOT….. in fact all of the time, due to mass promotion / competition and often due to these 3rd party (affiliate? sites), I have to say, I am very often led to MUCH better deals for exactly the same product advertised elsewhere or even when booking with properties or brands direct!

I am, it would seem, an advocate for free enterprise. I do not however agree with false advertising….. I can´t say that I have been ´lied´ to or misslead as yet.

Perhaps one should address their concerns with the travel provider (First Resort / TUI in this case) as they will likely take up the matter direct with their affiliate?

Despite the aparent dubius use of association trademarks, at the end of the day could it be that someone is somewhat jealous about not making money from the one banner on their own site???? As with everything in life, if you like em, use em. If you don´t agree or feel slighted, then don´t!

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I joined the Skybargains.co.uk affiliate scheme as I use to work for them as a travel consultant, but decided to leave as the travel industry is becoming much more competative and it’s much cheaper booking direct with the Tour operater or the airline themselves, why book easyjet with a travel agent when it’s £20.00 cheaper to book it direct with them.
Unless you have a personal clientel data base yourself { like I do} how would you know that everytime a booking is made via the link on your website that you are being informed , hence the fact you might never receive your commision or the travel company has to call the client back and tell them the flight has been sold out and they sell them something else so you lose out.
To put it blunt an affiliate scheme is helping them build up their data base for when they may potentially sell out in the future.I’VE SEEN IT ALL 1ST HAND

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I think Google is key on this one.

In years gone back it was very easy for ‘webbo’s’ to build a site, point some links to it and get listed by Google.

Google got wise to this and in several massive changes to its algorithms threw out many sites that just linked to travel affiliate pages. They termed this as ‘thin affiliates’. They recognised that these sites added no extra value to the consumer that going to the main travel site directly.

I understand Google are trying to only include sites that add some value on top of the affiliate product.

Some good examples include:

http://www.britainexpress.com/

This guy has written hundreds (maybe thousands) of pages on the UK and its attractions. He has also built in links to hotels but in my eyes this is a valuable affiliate partnership because he has taken the affiliate product and built into a site, rather than just building a page saying ‘Hotels in Skegness’ then linking direct to late rooms Skegness page for example.

Two other sites that spring to mind and that I have used (see earlier post) is

http://www.footballhotels.co.uk

http://www.concerthotels.eu

They both appear to be football fan/ gig lovers sites which has been built as a resource for their respective audiences, they are using an affiliate product but are listing the hotels with the distance from the venue/stadia rather than the centre of the city like most sites. I believe this adds value to their sites and they are trying to encourage this.

I guess referring to the ABTA bonding mentioned above then legally as long as the consumer is paying the main ABTA bonded company then there is no risk from them because they are buying from the travel agent/company rather than the affiliate.

In short I think there are some dodgy sites out there but Google seems to be doing a good job of weeding these out and only including quality sites.

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Dorian,

You really need to get over it. If an affiliate has the brains to go ahead and develope a site that utilizes many resources then dont sit there moaning for gods sake , get off your butt and build one yourself.

The difference between you and them, is they arent lazy and grow up. This is a dog eat dog world GOT IT. You know what Donald Trump would say, dont you – “hey its nothing personal, its just business”.

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Darren

If you are so worried about affiliate site, why do you set an example and remove the affiliate banners from your own website.

You can’t moan about other people when you are accepting commission yourself.

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Dave

I agree you fully.

Darren who is caling the kettle black.

Don’t be silly. Set an example.

John

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Affiliate sites are brilliant. How would you feel if someone attacked your business. If you have a problem dont use them. They are there to help people get to where they want to go.

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Interesting article and the replies are quite good too. Do you have an example of a terrible affiliate site and a good one? I’m working on a new one right now and would like to make sure mine adds value and is not either a useless one with no beneficial content or a dodgy looking one like real holiday reports…

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Hi Darren

I would be interested in your opinion now a year later. From my end affiliate sites are now much more professional and I am happy to use them as they usually bring many like products together to one spot – much like a supermarket – and that IS good for consumers.

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What an incredibly naive statement, doesn’t really give you any credibility or your site.

It’s like saying what’s the point in affiliate marketing, like every other website on the net there are good ones and bad ones.

I’d have to see the affiliate site you are talking about but there are 2 situations where showing an ABTA badge are accpetable, 1 some affiliates are linked to travel agencies who are part of ABTA and they hold a contract with those companies to be ABTA bonded.

2nd some affiliates only use merchants who are ABTA bonded and can display that the companies or partners they are promoting are all ABTA bonded..

if there is a site that is trying to say they are part of ABTA then just contact ABTA and they will deal with it they have a strict policy on the use of their name brand.

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So it is lol, I should have checked, it just showed up while I was looking at another post..

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