In 2018, there were about 1 billion travelers on American and foreign airlines, which was an increase of 4.8% over the previous year. The increase in low-cost air carriers is believed to be one of the reasons that airline travel is rising. Perhaps the ability for people to find and book their own inexpensive flights is adding to that, as well.
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As airline travel continues to grow, travelers will still need to find the best airline booking companies. Affiliate marketers can help by connecting customers with the best companies and make some money in the process.
If you’re interested, read through this list of the top 10 flight booking affiliate programs. It may spark some ideas about how you could use these programs in your niche marketing strategies. I’ll share some of my own ideas at the end of this article, too.
Flight Booking Affiliate Programs
- Cheap Flights
- Skyscanner
- Expedia
- Flight Network
- TripAdvisor
- Travelstart
- Kayak
- Booking.com
- JetRadar
- ExploreTrip
1. Cheap Flights
- URL: Cheap Flights Affiliate Program
- Commission: $0.25-0.45 per click
- Cookie: Unknown
Cheap Flights is an airline booking business. It also offers bookings for hotels, car rentals, and packages for flights for hotels. Under the ‘Special Offers’ tab, Cheap Flights promotes vacation packages to destinations like Kona or eight-day stays in Vietnam for less than $500.
Cheap Flights has a pay-per-click affiliate program, affiliates can earn up to $0.45 for clicks from desktop computers and tablets and $0.25 for clicks from mobile devices. This company works with other travel companies, such as Priceline, Travelocity, and Expedia to bring the best deals to its customers.
One nice thing about Cheap Flights is that it has a tab that provides travel news and tips.
Why You Should Promote Cheap Flights: This company offers some really great travel deals, which could attract and convert shoppers. However, the pay-per-click affiliate model makes it difficult to tell how much you could actually earn as an affiliate with this company.
2. Skyscanner
- URL: Skyscanner Affiliate Program
- Commission: 50%
- Cookie: Unknown
Skyscanner is a travel booking service that offers some great deals on flights, including daily deals, daily flights under $100, and weekly flight deals for under $200. Affiliates can promote these special deals as well as the full website to help attract potential travelers.
This company has support for 30 different languages and 70 currencies, and it’s a well-known travel search engine. It could be relatively easy for affiliates to use this service to expand their referral base as they promote travel packages globally.
Affiliates earn a commission from Skyscanner for bookings for flights, hotels, and car rentals. They also earn $1 for every app that is installed on a mobile device because of their referrals. The affiliate program is administered through CJ.
Why You Should Promote Skyscanner: The commission rate is great, and the extra payment for referrals who download the app is a nice surprise.
3. Expedia
- URL: Expedia Affiliate Program
- Commission: Unlisted
- Cookie: Unknown
Expedia is one of the top travel-booking businesses that allow people to book their own travel plans. The website has around 60 million unique visitors each month, and more than 400 airlines can be booked through Expedia. In addition, the company lists 260,000 properties that can be booked, as well. Expedia has 150 travel-related websites in more than 70 countries.
The customer discounts are available because Expedia works directly with travel suppliers to set up both a wide range of choices and great rates. Expedia works with both affiliates and directly with travel agents to sell flight bookings, hotel stays, activities, car rentals, and full vacation packages. Rates on some travel plans with Expedia can sometimes be around 50% less than what travelers could find with other companies.
Why You Should Promote Expedia: Expedia is well-known, and its deep discounts could attract shoppers. However, without knowing the commission and cookie length, it’s difficult to tell how much you could make as an affiliate marketer with Expedia.
4. Flight Network
- URL: Flight Network Affiliate Program
- Commission: Unlisted
- Cookie: Unknown
Flight Network is a well-known Canadian travel-booking company and one of the fastest-growing Canadian companies. The company focuses on providing low airfares, hotel bookings, car rentals, and full vacation packages. In Canada, this company is the second most-visited travel website, coming in right behind the global travel company Expedia.
One of the nice things about Flight Network is that airline tickets can sometimes be purchased for around 80% off their normal prices. Flight Network has bookings for 500 destinations in 80 countries worldwide.
Flight Network’s affiliate program is being administered by FlexOffers.
Why You Should Promote Flight Network: The steep discount on airfare could bring in shoppers. It could also fit well with some niche marketing efforts (think all things Canadian), which could widen the advertising ability for some affiliate marketers.
5. TripAdvisor
- URL: TripAdvisor Affiliate Program
- Commission: 50%
- Cookie: Unknown
TripAdvisor provides deep links to more than 500,000 individual websites for cities and hotel pages in America, and it even includes links to restaurants that travelers can try out. The website has around 706 million reviews, interactive forums, and information for booking accommodations.
TripAdvisor can be used to check prices, plan tours or other activities, and make reservations. Although the company focuses mostly on the destinations, there’s also a tab for booking flights to those destinations, as well. TripAdvisor offers support in 28 different languages and helps around 490 million travelers every month.
TripAdvisor runs its affiliate program through Awin and CJ.
Why You Should Promote TripAdvisor: TripAdvisor provides everything affiliate marketers need to promote the company, including continually updated marketing materials. The 50% commission is nice, too, and there are additional incentive programs for affiliates who do well.
6. Travelstart
- URL: Travelstart Affiliate Program
- Commission: $6-8
- Cookie: Unknown
Like many travel booking companies, Travelstart helps plan journeys with flight booking, hotels, car rentals, and vacation packages. The website offers travel news as well as special deals so that frequent travelers can make good decisions when they book their flights and hotels.
Travestart runs its affiliate program through Impact Radius. Affiliate payments are deposited directly into the affiliate’s bank accounts. Commission rates for domestic bookings are $6, and affiliates earn an $8 commission for international bookings.
Travelstart has a white-label program for affiliate marketers who have a large number of followers and want to promote Travelstart’s deals as their own. They partnered with Impact to managed their affiliate program.
Why You Should Promote Travelstart: The white-label program could be a great idea for affiliate marketers who are travel agents as well.
7. Kayak
- URL: Kayak Affiliate Program
- Commission: Unlisted
- Cookie: Unknown
Kayak, a white-label online travel agency, was acquired by Booking.com in 2013. This company now has more than 12 international offices, 60 international websites, and offers support in more than 20 different languages.
Kayak allows customers to book flights, hotels, car rentals, and cruises. It’s designed specifically to help travel agents build their business. Customers can find good deals under the deals tab. There’s also a packages page where customers can browse through possible destinations. Travelers can also search out local restaurants.
Why You Should Promote Kayak: Kayak doesn’t disclose its commission rate or cookie length, so affiliate marketers can’t tell right away how much they can make with this company. However, this company has some nice features, including the fact that it provides recommendations for certain flights or hotels as well as the cheapest options to compare against those recommendations.
8. Booking.com
- URL: Booking.com Affiliate Program
- Commission: 40%
- Cookie: Unknown
Booking.com’s main focus is on booking rooms for world travelers, which amounts to around 1,550,000 room bookings every day. Accommodations include bed-and-breakfast establishments, igloos, treehouses, trains, and hotels, and the website lists more than 2.4 million properties.
However, Booking.com isn’t designed for room accommodations only. Like most travel companies, Booking.com books flights, car rentals, and packages for flights and hotels together.
One thing that sets Booking.com apart from other travel companies is its focus on local volunteer service by encouraging its employees to volunteer locally. Booking.com also hosts a booster program to help companies involved in travel or tourism to expand.
Another nice thing about Booking.com is that this company works to create sustainable tourism. This includes efforts to reduce overcrowding and bottleneck situations at popular destinations, work to help conserve nature, and working to promote a focus on the local communities and culture.
Why You Should Promote Booking.com: This company’s focus on local tourism and eco-friendly traveling makes it stand out, and the commission rate is decent, too. Find out more about Booking.com in my in-depth review here.
9. JetRadar
- URL: JetRadar Affiliate Program
- Commission: 60-70%
- Cookie: 30 days
JetRadar is primarily a search engine for flights, but customers can also book car rentals and hotels on this website.
The affiliate commission rate offers a 5% referral commission with no cap. Affiliate marketers who bring in less than $3,500 in revenue from bookings per month earn a 60% commission, and those who bring in more than $3,500 can earn 70% on the revenue from bookings.
This company offers a white-label service for some affiliate marketers, which allows them to sell JetRadar’s products as their own.
Why You Should Promote JetRadar: The white-label service and excellent commission rates are perfect for affiliate marketers with travel blogs or other travel-related websites.
10. ExploreTrip
- URL: ExploreTrip Affiliate Program
- Commission: Up to $11
- Cookie: Unknown
ExploreTrip offers several types of deals on airfare, including 24-hour sales, business class flights, round trip or one-way flights, international or domestic flights, and more. This company negotiates with several prominent airlines to provide steep discounts that can only be found on the ExploreTrip website. Because of this, ExploreTrip has a guarantee to meet or beat prices offered by other travel booking companies.
ExploreTrip is also accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and there are no booking fees for travelers who book trips through ExploreTrip. Only real-time airfares are listed on the website, so customers aren’t misled by advertisements for low airfares that are already booked up.
Why You Should Promote ExploreTrip: The low airline ticket prices and real-time airfare postings make this a great travel website for people who fly a lot. The commission rate for affiliate marketers is average, but the ability to promote the steep discounts could draw in and convert shoppers.
Affiliate Website Ideas
Now that you’ve read about the top 10 flight booking affiliate programs, do you know how you’d like to use them? There are several ways you can weave these programs into a travel blog.
For example, you could promote flight booking companies on a website that focuses on family history research. A website like this one could also feature subscription-based online research programs like Ancestry.com, genetic testing kits, and even hardware like computers or scanners that could help preserve documents.
Another idea is a website that zeroes in on world cuisines. Besides promoting travel bookings to locations with interesting foods, a website like this one could also feature cooking equipment, kitchen appliances, specialty ingredients, local restaurants, and even cookbooks.
One other idea is a website focusing on lifestyles for retirees. Travel bookings could be featured here, as well as home health care equipment and medical supplies.
Boost Your Affiliate Earnings
These 10 affiliate programs are just the beginning of what's possible. There are hundreds of ways to earn affiliate commissions with your website, including product reviews, top 10 lists, how-to guides, and more
But what about traffic and conversions? How do you make sure your affiliate links get clicked?
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Nathaniell
What's up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. My name is Nathaniell and I'm the owner of One More Cup of Coffee. I started my first online business in 2010 promoting computer software and now I help newbies start their own businesses. Sign up for my #1 recommended training course and learn how to start your business for FREE!
Top 10 Genetic Testing Affiliate Programs For Testing Out New Affiliate Earning Possibilities
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