The Future of Affiliate Marketing in the Travel Industry

While the global pandemic impacted virtually every industry, few were hit as hard as the travel sector. However, this always-adaptable industry evolved to accommodate changes in consumer behavior and spending habits.

By embracing new technologies and emerging trends, several brands have found ways to revamp the way they market their services and are embracing the travel industry of the future. Affiliate marketing has proven particularly useful for driving growth among travel brands.

Let’s dig deeper into these marketing technologies, trends, and techniques so that you can incorporate them into your travel company’s growth strategy.

Travel industry brands are using dedicated partner development teams to recruit partners

The success of an affiliate program hinges on the quality and reliability of its affiliate partners. Recruiting affiliate and influencer partners independently can be a tedious, time-consuming, and nuanced process.

To streamline this task and tap into the wealth of knowledge supplied by qualified experts, it’s important for travel industry brands to leverage an innovative partner recruitment team, like the dedicated one at Acceleration Partners. Our specialized partner development team connects brands with partners that best align with their business goals and values. More importantly, they empower brands to engage with high-quality partners at scale, enabling them to build their programs efficiently.

Data and analytics tools are guiding decision-making

Having a huge network of affiliate and influencer partners sounds great, but those partnerships aren’t doing a bit of good unless it includes active affiliates. To gauge the efficacy of an affiliate program, travel companies need data and analytics tools. But investing in custom software solutions is cost-prohibitive.

To circumvent this roadblock, some hotels and other travel industry entities have turned to proprietary reporting technology like APVision. Our market-leading technology now includes generative AI features that enable Acceleration Partners’ client services teams to make faster, smarter decisions when managing partnership programs by leveraging over a decade of aggregate data from thousands of affiliates and partnership programs.

With this robust platform, Acceleration Partner’s team can capture all available performance, promotion, and partner data to determine what sort of impact your affiliates are making on your business and use these personalized insights to propel program growth.

Hotels are doing less with more

In response to turbulent events, many travel brands have considered scaling back their marketing budgets. While cutting costs is a wise move, travel businesses still need to get their services and deals in front of consumers if they want to thrive. Enter partnership marketing.

Partnership marketing is a broad concept that encompasses various tactics, like affiliate and influencer marketing. Most of the techniques included in partnership marketing are performance-based, meaning you don’t pay your marketing partners unless they deliver specific results (i.e., a hotel booking).

Implementing a performance-based marketing model enables you to make every dollar count. Since your affiliate partners don’t get paid unless they deliver, they will be highly incentivized to promote your services and drive sales.

Travel industry affiliate marketing success stories

The partnership marketing experts at Acceleration Partners have helped numerous travel industry brands revitalize their marketing strategies to increase return on ad spend (ROAS) and make every advertising dollar count.

Supporting influencer and affiliate partnerships with leading-edge technologies is a foundational concept that Acceleration Partners leverages to deliver real results for our clients.

For instance:

We partnered with Best Western GB to help them drive growth and connect with new audiences despite significant budget cuts. We streamlined their existing processes and used the performance-based affiliate channel to generate additional revenue. Best Western GP achieved a staggering 1804% ROAS, a cost per acquisition (CPA) of just 4.63%, and 1.7 million Euros in revenue via its affiliate channel.

Acceleration Partners also worked with a global hotel brand to help it activate its APAC partners. Our worldwide team provided actionable insights to the client, which enabled them to activate 17.5% of their partners and generate thousands in new revenue in just two months.

Affiliate marketing is the growth catalyst you’ve been searching for

Allocating resources to new technologies and implementing or reworking your affiliate program is the most pragmatic way to pursue business growth while strengthening your return on investment. Our case studies show that you can do less with more and achieve measurable results.

To get started, re-evaluate your affiliate marketing strategy and assess the activity of your current affiliate partners. Explore new technologies that can support your partner efforts and consider bringing in a premier partnership marketing agency to accelerate the evolution of your affiliate program. Doing so will prepare you to thrive in the travel industry of tomorrow.

Revolutionize your travel industry business with cutting-edge affiliate marketing strategies.

Connect with Acceleration Partners to leverage our dedicated team, advanced data tools, and performance-based models to scale your program, drive bookings, and increase your ROI.