Are you making enough money as a travel blogger? Perhaps you may want to check out this Booking.com affiliate review. In the past few years, Booking.com has grown to become a global travel e-commerce site employing over 17,000 people all over the world. The company has 198 offices in 70 countries.

So, wherever you are –New York, London, Sydney, or any part of the world – you can always source for the latest accommodation and travel needs on the site.

Booking.com Affiliate Program

Types of products: Broad range of travel booking 

Where to join: Booking.com Affiliate Page

Commission structure: 25%-40% of Booking.com revenue

Cookie length: Session-based

Payment Methods: Paypal

Traveling is a great idea, but how about making some money promoting your favorite hotels and other accommodation options to your friends who love traveling? It won’t take time before you get a bang for your buck and use it to travel.

Let’s look at Booking.com’s affiliate program.

Go to our affiliate programs page for more program reviews.

About Booking.com

t’s now one of the most preferred digital travel sites in the world. It didn’t start out that big, though. The parent company is Booking Holdings Inc., which was formed in 1996 in Amsterdam to make experiencing the world easier and accessible to everyone.

The site is available in 43 different languages and has over 28 million accommodation offers listed on their website. That includes hotels, apartments, and over 6.2 million homes. Sounds like something massive, right?

What else could a global traveler want if not a wide range of choices? Booking.com gives you just that and more according to your preferred location and budget.

How to Join Booking.com’s Affiliate Program

Besides being a global digital travel site, where people can list their accommodation and travel properties, the company also allows you to earn money as an affiliate. Being their affiliate comes with boundless opportunities.

Think about it; the site gets about 500 million visits every day, with more than 1 million bookings made per day. You can easily leverage this popularity to make tons of money in affiliate commissions.

But how can you do that?  

Start off by applying to become their affiliate. There are more 12k Booking.com affiliates. You just need to go to the affiliates sign up page [link]. Some people have also reported signing up via Swagbucks to get cashback.

Once you are on their sign up page, give out the details; name, email address, and password. You also need to select the country you are from before going to the next step.

The next step is adding your business information; this includes your website where you will be promoting their offers. Note that your site has to be professional before they approve you. It has to have relevant content.

The final step is just confirmation of the details before clicking submit.  

See? It’s easy to sign up as an affiliate. The next step is to wait for their confirmation email and a unique affiliate link to begin promoting their offers and getting commissions.

You can also ask property owners to list their property on booking.com. If they do it via your affiliate link, you will earn a commission.

Go to our travel affiliate programs page for more reviews.

Booking.com Affiliate Commission Rates and Rules

How much can you make as a Booking.com affiliate? It all depends on the number of bookings you get per month through your affiliate link.

Here are the rates depending on stayed booking per month:

0 – 50 stayed bookings is 25%

51 – 150 is 30%

151 – 500 is 35%

501 or more is 40%

Sadly, these rates are not dependent on the price of the booking offer. It’s based on the percentage the company gets from the offer. You are their affiliate. So, you earn a percentage of what they are getting in commission rates, as well.

If they are getting $60 on a $300 accommodation property listed on their site, you will get a percentage of the $60, which can be anything between $18 and $24, depending on the number of stayed bookings you achieved that month.

You can also promote Booking.com to property owners and get commissions. Once a property owner adds their property, they will verify the property and ensure it meets their standards.

Once all the checks and qualifications are fulfilled, you will receive $55 in affiliate commissions. 

Affiliate Tools and Support

he company has really invested in technology that can allow you to promote offers effectively and get rewarded for your efforts.

Here are some tools that are at your disposal as an affiliate:

Banners

These are one of the best affiliate tools to use on your website. Depending on your preferred position, the banners come in different sizes and shapes. Hence, you need to place it in a strategic position.

It should be a place where it can enhance good user experience and get high conversion rates. Booking.com also gives you the option of selecting banners with different themes, depending on your preference.

Search Box Widget

Booking.com also has a search box to use as an affiliate. You can add the search box on your site and allow visitors to search for any information they want regarding hotels, travels, apartments for rent, and others.

It can even allow them to input the dates they want accommodation and search for the best offer.

There are other tools such as the Deals Finder, which allows visitors to find discounted offers in their preferred location, and Map Widget, which shows a map of all accommodation options in an area.

Do you have a WordPress blog? You can set up the tools above very easily using their WordPress plugin. You can set up search boxes and banners in any of your blog posts.

booking widget

Inspiring search box

You can also use the inspiring search box as an affiliate tool. In fact, the site recommended this as one of their best-performing widgets.

Once you install it on your site, you can customize it to a specific city or location based on the visitors you are getting on your site. If a visitor lands on your site, he will see the properties listed in various locations.

The best thing about this tool, however, is that it allows the visitor to choose from among the most affordable listings. Once a visitor clicks on the link, he will land on Booking.com via your affiliate link. That’s how you can easily earn commissions.

Links

You can also choose to go with hyperlinks. Simply go to a specific offer, such as a hotel listed on the site, and create a customized affiliate link. You can then write a blog post regarding that offer and link it to the offer via your customized affiliate link.

You can choose to direct the affiliate link to the offer or landing page.

Go to our affiliate programs page for more program reviews.

Pros and Cons —
Booking.com Affiliate Program

Booking.com is a great site, not only for property owners but also for affiliates. However, it also has some hurdles.

Here are the downsides and benefits of becoming their affiliate:

ADVANTAGES

  • Free and easy to sign up from any part of the world
  • Competitive commission rates
  • Dedicated customer support
  • Many interactive affiliate marketing tools and data reporting for affiliates

DISADVANTAGES

  • You will only cash out once you hit $117, which is a little higher for a beginner
  • They pay two months after the booking is made
  • You need 50 bookings to get payment approval
  • Session-based so if your referral leaves the site and returns even in 1 hour, you are not credited.

Should You Become a Booking.com Affiliate?

Booking.com is a great site with strong brand awareness. They have lots of tools and support for affiliates. The session based attribution though is problematic.

Yes many sales are made on the first visit but many are not. I prefer a program where my referral can return a few days later to finalize their purchase and I still get paid.