Is anyone targetting travel industry? If, yes what are the best affiliate networks for hotels, air tickets and car rentals?

I use Ian for my hotel booking and travel packages. They have a cool private label program where you can customize the booking page to look like your website. It's the same affiliate the hotels.com uses. More info at: http://www.ian.com/ian/signup/home.jsp

Hiya,

When you mentioned "best affiliate networks", what might be your criteria for defining what's good or "best"? (e.g. ease of sign up, ease of acceptance, fast payout, many payment modes, accept affiliates from around the world etc.)

I think C J dot com has some travel programs.

Trip Advisor dot com used to have an affiliate program but they "are not not accepting new affiliates"

I believe some of the CPA networks like Hydra (hiss......) also have travel-related affiliate programs.

Separately, how might you folks market such travel affiliate programs?
e.g.
PPC?
Travel related Niche Content site?
Black hat? (if yes, what might you do, specifically e.g. cookies stuffing, nude celeb baiting etc.)
Email Marketing.... and so on.

Thanks for sharing. Cheerio

@Bama - Thanks. I will look into it.

@gifmore - Thanks for the detailed answer. Well with good aff networks, I meant the ones that do less shaving, do good tracking, not too nosy about where traffic is coming from etc etc. I will look into c j and hydra and see what they have to offer....

I'm not sure if this is relevant to this post, specifically. However, since we are on the topic of travel affiliate programs.. heh ..let me rant on a lil more.

Some folks have suggested to "sell" info products (e.g. ebooks, e-reports) if you have a Niche Travel website that might also be listing or selling air tickets, hotel rooms and tours, etc. They figure that since people are visiting are already in a frame of mind to "travel", that they might pick up an ebook or eguide as a "by-the-way" (did Frank K*ern popularize this term ?) purchase. If you accept this idea, then you can add c*lick*bank and pay*dotcom.c0m to "providers" of products which can earn you affiliate commissions. Other folks have suggested having CPA zip/email submits as a popup or as a link on your travel niche content website, so that you might earn some easy cash when visitors are "researching" their travel options.

I figure you could probably chuck in travel insurance products, pack backs from A*mazon (as an Amaz*on affiliate), maybe have an e*bay auction page too, on travel stuff (even air tickets) ...warning.. this paragraph is just my ranting .. so read critically and with a pinch of salt

Cheerio

Travel industry is a very competitive market