Directory guide or affiliate bookings for hostel site

[DomainM]

I have acquired a number of niche .com travel domains over the last few years with a plan to develop a network of unique travel guides. I have already developed glampsites.com, a camping directory which seems to be gaining traction with business owners. I also have a luxury hostel related domain which receives nearly 100 visits per day and has been referenced in at least one glossy magazine site.

At current hostel site uses a Wordpress directory theme with only 12 listings, this was uploaded to provide an initial presence about 2 years ago. The hostel site has no SEO but appears in second place for a hot trending sector title due to the single word .com domain and I have received two advertiser enquiries within the last month.

My question is whether I should partner with booking.com and build an affiliate based booking website which would deliver income by passing traffic to external sites for reservations with no ability for business owners to update listing details, or alternatively build a traditional directory site (like glampsites.com) charging subscription fees and allowing hostel owners to link to their own website/booking systems.

To put my question in perspective, the luxury hostel market is very small (possibly no more that 1/200 businesses). The hostel booking marketplace is dominated by 'Hostel World' (acquired hostelbookers) and booking.com. 99% of hostels use these booking engines but there is vocal disharmony within the hostel owner community about commissions and changes to terms and conditions.

There are a number of low flying directory hostel sites which have received positive support from hostel owners but have gained very little traction due to the above booking engine market share and large travel sector.

The easy option is of course is to use traffic to drive affiliate income as this would remove all need for hostel owner engagement but requires high volumes of traffic to my website for any sizable income.

Sorry for the long post but I am unsure how to progress this site.

 

[accelerator]

So your questions might be:

1) Will I make more money running an affiliate site or by taking adverts directly?

2) Will it be more effort running an affiliate site or taking adverts directly?

... and the probable answers are:

1) More money if you take adverts directly.

2) More effort if you take adverts directly.

Rgds

 

[DomainM]

Thank you, you've summarised my question perfectly. This gives me something to think over. Thanks

 

[DomainM]

In terms of traffic necessary to run a profitable affiliate site what level would be needed. I appreciate that this may be a difficult question to answer as conversion rates change per sector and values vary, but would I need 1000 or 10000 visits per day?

 

[martin-s]

As a for instance, one of my sites has traffic converting at Booking.com at around 2-3% and the average commission is 5-7 EUR. Around 0.20 EUR EPC.

It helps a lot when you go above 50 bookings a month as the commission improves by 20%. (Edit: my site has fallen back to below the 50-level at around 30-35/mo).

 

[martin-s]

PS. If you have multiple sites using Booking.com, booking stats can be added together to break through the commission levels.