How to Ethically Promote Affiliate Links as a Travel Blogger
Affiliate marketing is how I make the majority of my full-time income as a travel blogger.
But a LOT of people are skeptical of affiliate marketing. And for good reason—knowing that you’re earning commissions on the tours, hotels, and other products you write about can make some readers distrust your advice.
But when done thoughtfully, affiliate marketing can be a win-win-win: readers get directed to booking amazing travel experiences in one click, local businesses get more bookings, and bloggers earn a living while creating genuinely helpful but free travel blogs.
That said, there are ethical considerations every travel blogger should think about before filling their posts with affiliate links, and in this article I’m sharing all my thoughts on this topic!
A Travel Blogger’s Guide to Ethical Affiliate Marketing
Don’t Let Commissions Dictate Your Content
It’s tempting to prioritize commission-earning tours, hotels, and products over experiences you can’t monetize. But your job as a travel blogger is to create genuinely helpful travel guides—whether they earn you commission or not.
That means including once-in-a-lifetime experiences and hidden gems even if there’s no commission attached. Or, maybe promoting an excellent free walking tour over the ones on GetYourGuide and Viator.
Create content that celebrates the best travel experiences, then optimize for affiliate where you can. Readers notice when you put their experience above your payout, and that trust is ultimately what drives bookings.
Related: How to Write the BEST Travel Blogs That Readers Come Back For
Not Every Article Needs to Earn
You’ll find the freedom to create reader-first travel guides when your accept that not every blog post has to be monetized. Building a trusted travel brand is far more important than squeezing commission out of every article.
Examples of articles that aren’t easily monetizable with affiliates include:
- Guides to small towns with few bookable hotels or experiences
- Reviews of hotels not listed on travel booking platforms platforms
- Guides to specific beaches, hikes, or parks
- Guides to local restaurants, cafés, and bars
Of course, there are exceptions with theses examples! You can link a backpack in a hiking guide, add food tours in a restaurant roundup, or even include a general affiliate box at the top of a post.
But my point here is that you shouldn’t shape your entire travel blogging content plan around what articles will most easily earn with affiliates. Articles that aren’t as easily monetize still grow your brand by building trust, adding to your mailing list, and funneling readers to posts that are monetized with affiliates.
It’s Okay to Link to Affiliates You Haven’t Personally Tried
You don’t need to stay in every hotel or join every tour to recommend it. Our job is to curate the overwhelming amount of travel information online into helpful travel guides that narrow down the options.
We save our readers time, which provides real value. And if we’ve built trust with our readers, they won’t care that if you didn’t go on that one bar hopping tour—what they’ll care about is that you wish you did after you heard such good things about it on the last day of your trip.
Or, that lovely hotel you couldn’t afford but ate lunch at—it’s totally okay to link to it for your hotel recommendation in that destination!
The key here is to only recommend the hotels we’d actually want to stay at, tours we’d actually want to join, and travel products we’d actually buy. Go for the highest rated, most trustworthy, and unique tours, hotels, and products!
Be Honest, but Feel Free to Link to Products You DON’T Like
Part of creating a trustworthy travel blog is being honest about less than desirable experiences. First, let me be clear: I don’t recommend bad mouthing local businesses, or on the flip side, recommending travel experiences that aren’t worth booking.
But I believe you can absolutely ethically link to a product/tour/hotel you didn’t like and potentially earn commission with clicks to that link. How?!
Let me give an example! In my article about Sumidero Canyon in Mexico I’m honest that going on a boat tour through the canyon is 110% worth doing—but I’m also honest that there are a few companies that have a monopoly on these boat tours, and none of them are great.
I link to the tour options, but am clear about what I did and didn’t like about them. This article still gets some bookings, and most importantly, genuinely helps my readers plan and prepare. I’m sure I could lie and get a whole lot more bookings, but those readers might never click on my blog again when they see my name show up in search results.
Work With Affiliates You’d Actually Use
You’ll probably end up linking to a handful of different affiliates on a regular basis. And for the travel affiliates you link to repeatedly, please consider whether the booking platform is one you’d actually use yourself.
I find it very easy and natural to link to Booking.com for hotels and Viator for tours because I’ve been using both platforms for years! I genuinely love Booking’s generous rewards program and find Viator to be very reliable. I also can generally trust most major travel booking platforms, but want to be careful about what I recommend to my audience because their experience matters to me.
A big elephant in the room is Amazon. Being an Amazon affiliate seems like a no-brainer for almost any content creator, but if linking to Amazon goes against your values, you may create distrust amongst likeminded readers. I’m still an Amazon affiliate even though its not my favorite company, but its something certainly worth considering.
Avoid Irrelevant Links
Just because you can link to ten different affiliate products in one post doesn’t mean you should.
Bombarding readers with endless links—insurance, eSIMs, hotels, tours, car rentals, luggage—can feel overwhelming and make your article feel like a jumble of a dozen different sales pitches.
Reality is, your reader is probably not going to purchase more than one product in one sitting. Don’t create distrust with your audience just to throw in more affiliate links.
Don’t get me wrong, of course. You can absolutely naturally link to 10+ different affiliates in a single article but its not going to be natural in every article. Here are examples:
My 10 Day Southern Italy Itinerary includes around 50 affiliate links, which sounds like a lot. But it is 5,000-words and covers a handful of destinations. The links go to a variety of tours in each destination, car rentals, hotels, B&B, and hostels, and even a few products.
Meanwhile, my 800-word 1 Day Castelmezzano Itinerary only includes a few links because its about a small town, I link to local hotels and one hiking tour, but it doesn’t feel natural to add anything more!
Both articles are effective, but completely different!
Consider The Impact Beyond Your Readers
As travel bloggers, we don’t just shape our readers’ trips, we also influence tourism as a whole—and its impact on the local communities we write about.
Sometimes the highest-earning travel experiences negatively impact local communities and ecosystems… like rowdy party boats, exploitative animal tourism, or ‘hidden gems’ tours that expose small communities swaths of unwanted visitors.
Another thing to consider is that travel booking platforms usually take 10–30% per booking. While that’s part of the marketing cost of owning a travel business, it means that some smaller local businesses might choose not to work the big booking platforms you’re an affiliate of.
The upside? Your affiliate links can be a force for good when you highlight local eco-tours, regenerative hotels, and ethical experiences. You’re not just serving your readers—you’re helping create a demand for responsible tourism!
Whatever You Do, Legally Disclose Your Affiliate Link!
This one isn’t just ethical, it’s law. The FTC requires affiliate disclosures for websites operating in the the US, and most affiliate programs (like Amazon) have their own rules for how those disclosures should be worded.
I’m not an attorney, but generally, its best practice to place a clear disclosure at the top of every single article, with a link to your full written disclosure and privacy policy.
Final Thoughts
As you optimize your travel blog for affiliates, here are a few questions to ponder:
- Am I recommending this because it’s the best option for my reader, or because it pays the highest commission?
- Does this travel affiliate partner align with my values (responsible tourism, sustainability, local benefit)?
- Am I giving my audience a well-rounded picture of what to do in this destination, including free tours or hotels that don’t show up on booking platforms?
- If my audience takes my advice, will it have a net positive, neutral, or harmful effect on local communities and ecosystems?
I hope this article was a helpful guide in your journey to create a sustainable travel blogging business that serves your readers, and earns you a generous income!
