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Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of Internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies, and in-house affiliate managers, specialized third party vendors, and various types of affiliates / publishers who promote the products and services of their partners. (Source: Wikipedia)

 

While Hotels can employ a variety of affiliate marketing techniques, primary methods include setting up their own simple affiliate program where those who generate sales are rewarded with a commission (much like a travel agent commission, but usually lower)…or working with established online affiliate marketplace like U2Mee to create an affiliate program.

So what’s the benefit you ask? Online Affiliate marketing essentially utilizes the power of other established networks and sites to leverage your brand and generate sales based on performance. This is a much better approach that pure banner advertising since it does not require direct relationship management (when using an online affiliate marketplace), it is much more cost effective as banner buys in China are expensive, mostly on a CPD (cost per day) and the media is purchased with any relationship to the outcomes of getting new room bookings.  The two ways you can work with an affiliate network is either self serve (you do the setup and management of your programs) or full service (where you have an affiliate manager arrange the programs, recruit merchants and take responsibility to driving new room bookings).  Either way is fine, depending our your resources, skills and time.

Even OTA’s (Online Travel Agencies) employ very successful Affiliate programs to generate booking leads and pay out from 2-6% of booking revenues to affiliates…e.g. Booking.com, GTA, etc. Other OTA’s employ affiliate networks to deploy their programs, e.g. Ctrip (in China) and Expedia (in West). Hotel Chains like Accor Hotels, Sheraton, Westin, Four Points, Marriott, etc have also been using Affiliate programs for some time in the West to reach out to a variety of global web publishers and generate bookings. It's now time to develop comparable affiliate solutions in China.. even smaller hotel groups can achieve significant value in developing effective affiliate programs.

More on Affiliate marketing for Hotels and Hospitality in future posts…I am trying not to make this post an advert but if you want more information on affiliate programs then send me an email or check out U2Mee (www.u2mee.com) (as a Chinese affiliate network), other affiliate networks in the West include Commission Junction (cj.com) and Tradedoubler (www.tradedoubler.com)