In an interesting move for the niche tour operator market, TourCMS has launched a marketplace to connect their large number of niche and adventure specialist travel companies with distribution partners including affiliates and travel agents.
Rather than creating something like an affiliate network (charging the suppliers and paying the affiliates but keeping a cut), the TourCMS marketplace will instead be “just” a marketplace and technology provider to connect the holiday companies with the partners.
TourCMS will be charging a monthly access fee to make ends meet. This will likely put a lot of “grass-roots” affiliates off but there is a whopping 120 day free trial so still worth a look. I think they should make it free for partners to access though – the same as how Ritzy’s nightclub lets girls in free before 23:00 – they know the guys will be happy to stump up a fiver to get in!
One thing I like is that there’s an RSS feed for keeping up to date with the latest suppliers available to promote. It’s a little bit like what Affiliate Window is working towards with their Darwin administration area – merchants can get to know more about the affiliates – promotion methods etc.
One issue with these specialist tour operators when looking at it from a pure affiliate standpoint is that many of the products won’t convert online – even if the booking functionality exists there will normally be many questions and details that come up and the phone number will end up being used. However I this marketplace presents interesting opportunities for online marketing specialists. As Alex Bainbridge, owner of TourCMS points out :
Take the example of someone wanting to provide PPC management services to a travel company. They can take the tour name / lead in price data from the marketplace – and create PPC adverts from that…. if that marketing person charges on time spent (rather than money made) then that is fine by us – as we are not earning money from the value of the transactions but from the sharing of the data.
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Thanks for the review!
Incidentally, we have changed our pricing plan now and marketplace partners (affiliates) no longer have to pay after 120 days. Your feedback on that was very helpful. Thank you.