Your Comprehensive Guide to the Top 10 Travel Affiliate Programs

Tripadvisor is one of the largest travel sites, featuring 1.4 million places to stay and over 795 million genuine reviews. Joining their travel affiliate program enables you to leverage the brand and create engaging travel content with trackable affiliate links to the site. 

You will receive unto a 50% commission when a user clicks out to any of Tripadvisor’s hotel booking partners – they do not necessarily have to book. Even if the users are in their research and planning stages, you will still get paid.

Booking.com claims to be the world’s #1 accommodation booking website, offering  30 Million bookable rooms across 2 million properties. They are also a popular travel comparison site that covers flights, hotels, and car rentals. Their affiliate program is managed via Travelpayouts. It is free and easy to join. 

When you join as an affiliate marketer, you will receive various tools like deep linking, banner integration, and search box. However, a limitation is their session-based cookie duration. That means you tend to lose the commission if the traffic does not convert there and then. Thankfully, their high EPC and 4% commission rate will make up for it.

Expedia is another leading travel brand, providing access to over 400 airlines and 260,000 properties. There are various travel categories that you can promote – cars, cruises, discoveries, vacation rentals, deals, collections, rewards, etc. There are also some non-commissionable items on which you will not get any commission. Therefore, it is important to know the program terms before you start linking. 

They have a large travel inventory and reliable commissions, but your payments are only made available when you make at least $50. The commission is payable once a month, i.e., the 15^th of every month.

In the travel price comparison niche, Agoda is a trusted name – perhaps because they have been in the market since 2005. Presently, they provide hotel and flight deals, and also specialize in apartment and long-term rentals in foreign countries. These types of accommodation or longer stays might be of interest to an affiliate marketer as Agoda attracts both private and corporate travelers. 

The commission amount begins at 5%, but you get to earn better with more completed bookings every month. Additionally, you can enjoy features like easy integration, multilingual support, actionable data, and various free tools to get started and promote Agoda’s products and services right away.

Skyscanner is a leading travel search site that provides an online comparison for hotels, flights, and car hire. By signing up with their car hire and flights affiliate program, you can earn a revenue starting from 20%. They have a short payout window, which enables you to monetize the traffic fast and efficiently. You can promote Skyscanner via banners, travel widgets, or text links. 

Skyscanner affiliate program accepts activities and traffic sources from blogs, travel websites, content platforms, forums, deals websites, social media groups, cashback websites, advertising networks, and sub networks.

Affiliate Commission: 20% 

Cookie Duration: 45 days 

EPC: $9.36

Travelpayouts offers the best travel affiliate programs in the industry. Their program also provides exclusive tools that allow you to promote their partner hotels, flights, car rentals, activities, tours, and insurance. They have over 80+ affiliate programs to choose from, with advanced promo tools like widgets, white-label, mobile SDK, deep links, WordPress plugin, API, blogs, and more. Your commissions across multiple programs will be paid altogether once a month. They also provide five payout methods.

It is important to note here that each affiliate program has a different commission rate. So, you must check the details of their commission amount and type of program before you sign up. Their huge travel inventory, WordPress plugin, and wide affiliate network are some reasons Travelpayouts is a good option for affiliate marketers.

Affiliate Commission: Up to 70%, though the commission rate will vary for each program 

Cookie Duration: 30 days 

EPC: $30

Travala.com is an online accommodation booking travel site, featuring a wide selection of hotels, resorts, villas, and vacation rentals. By joining their Travel Affiliate Partner Program, you can connect to and promote over 2,000,000 partner properties spread across 230 countries globally. You can earn a 5% commission on each booking, but with more bookings every month, the earning amount will increase. 

They provide multi-payout methods, including cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. This is a unique niche to promote through your travel blog, site or social media because cryptos are fast gaining popularity nowadays. Signing with the Travala.com affiliate program is free and simple. You can choose to promote a variety of assets like text links, banners, social posts, or videos. All bookings coming from your affiliate channels are tracked in real-time and you can avail the reports in your dashboard. 

Affiliate Commission: 5% for each booking coming from your affiliate channels 

Cookie Duration: 90 days 

EPC: N/A

Globelink International is a travel insurance company, with over 1 million customers in Europe. They have a broad range of insurance policies for travelers across different categories – gap year students, backpackers, adventure, volunteers abroad, seniors, winter sports enthusiasts, and more. They offer an affiliate program that allows you to connect with their products and services, and promote the same via your channels. For every purchase, you can earn a commission of up to 20%. 

They also have a progressive commission plan that begins at 10%. With more sales, you earn more commissions. Whether you are an insurance consultant, a travel agent, or a blogger – anyone can join their affiliate program. Easy and quick integration ensures you can get started right away. They are a quality travel insurance provider with 20 years of experience. You can earn commission from every sale that comes via your affiliate channel – even if the traffic comes back later for purchase.

Affiliate Commission: Up to 20%

Cookie Duration: 90 days 

EPC: N/A

Hotels.com is a hotel reservation service worldwide, featuring 800,000+ hotels across 200 countries. They offer a competitive commission amount. Plus you can leverage their brand image, 30-day cookie lifetime, competitive rates, and great accommodation availability to promote their partner brands and drive sales. If a customer uses their promo code to book a hotel, you will receive an affiliate reward of 2.4% of the booking value. 

Typically, they allow different traffic types, including email marketing, native advertising, promotional codes, YouTube traffic, in-mobile apps, or cashback. However, they have a broad list of traffic types that they do not approve of. It is important to know these before you sign up. They also provide tools like banners, widgets, and links – wherein you can use only two types of these promotional methods.

Affiliate Commission: 4.8% on the booking price

Cookie Duration: 30 days 

EPC: $250