I think everyone is familiar with the airline ticket search engine Aviasales.ru. So, just a couple of months ago, they launched their own hotel search engine Hotellook.ru. Let me remind you that earlier the search for hotels was carried out on the subdomain hotels.aviasales.ru, and not their own databases were used, but from the Hotelscombined.com partner program, which meant the issuance of search results from a third-party intermediary service, but in the Aviasales interface. Now it is its own website, its own agreements with booking systems and some hotels directly.
Hotel search engine Hotellook.ru
What does this mean for the average user?
The average user will be able to compare prices for hotels from several booking systems in one place. Now there are about 15 of these systems, and then there will be even more. The scheme is the same as with air tickets: nothing is sold, but only searched. A good helper service for travelers.
Although I often search for hotels on the spot, I also use such services. It is much more convenient than going in turn to different sites of booking systems, such as Agoda, Booking, LatestRooms, etc., and comparing where the same hotel or guesthouse is, it will be cheaper. Prices may vary by 20-30%.
In fact, there are very few such convenient search engines in Russian. Therefore, now there will be a choice of what to use. The site is still new, and all the possibilities have not been used yet, but I would like to believe that Hotellook will offer something new.
What this means for the Aviasales affiliate program?
As I already wrote, in the case of the Aviasales affiliate program, they are intermediaries for us in the search for hotels, and their charges are directly dependent on Hotelscombined, which at any time may consider that searches are taking place without reservations, and therefore commissions can be reduced. And those who have worked directly with Hotelscombined know that they quite often like to block accounts when the payout threshold approaches and they start checking traffic for the number of bookings. It seems to me that even Aviasales had problems because of this, because in the statistics I often saw how earnings from hotels fell, and then rises again..
Many called the blocking of accounts from Hotelscombined a scam, although it is not. Judge for yourself, hotel search engines pay partners not a percentage of the booking (since they have nothing to do with reservations), but a certain amount for the transition from their website to the website of the booking system. And if it so happens that for a long time the partner brings only those users who make transitions, but then do not book anything, then why are such partners needed. Although I would at Hotelscombined do a traffic check much earlier than the $ 200 payout threshold, so that the partner does not keep their code on their site for a long time if they are not satisfied with it. It would be more honest.
So, when the Hotellook search engine spins up a little and all the necessary functionality appears in it, then Aviasales will switch to it, abandoning Hotelscombined, and then the revenues from hotels for partners (that is, for you and me) should probably increase a little, because they no longer will be mediation. I also hope that Aviasales will be more loyal to partners and will take into account some of their requirements..
