Last updated: June 3, 2026
Best Vacation Deals participates in affiliate marketing programs. This disclosure explains exactly how our affiliate relationships work, who our partners are, and how we keep our editorial recommendations honest. We follow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s guidance on endorsements and testimonials (“FTC Endorsement Guides”) and the FTC Act’s prohibition on deceptive practices.
How affiliate marketing works on this site
When you click an outbound link to one of our travel partners and complete a qualifying booking, the partner pays us a commission. That commission is the primary way Best Vacation Deals funds its editorial work. We do not run banner ads, we do not accept paid placements, and we do not run sponsored “best of” lists. Affiliate commissions and (occasionally) display advertising via standard ad networks are how we keep the lights on.
Your price doesn’t change
Affiliate commissions are paid by the partner, not added to your bill. If a hotel costs $179 a night on Booking.com, it costs $179 a night whether you click through us or go direct. The commission comes out of the partner’s marketing budget — it’s their cost of acquiring a customer. You get the same rate either way.
Our affiliate partners
We work with more than 100 travel brands. The largest of them include:
- Booking.com
- Hotellook
- Viator
- GetYourGuide
- DiscoverCars
- Agoda
- Stay22
- And 90+ additional hotel, tour, transfer, insurance, and activity brands accessed via TravelPayouts and other reputable affiliate networks
This list changes as we add or sunset partners. The presence of a brand here is not an endorsement of every product they sell — it simply means we may earn a commission if you book through us.
Editorial independence
This is the part that matters most:
- Recommendations are based on quality, not commission rate. When two partners offer the same hotel or tour, we recommend the one with the better price, better cancellation policy, or better reputation — not the one paying us more.
- No pay-to-play. No hotel, brand, or operator can pay us to be included in a roundup, ranked higher, or featured in our newsletter.
- No sponsored content disguised as editorial. If something is sponsored or paid, we will label it clearly. We currently do not run sponsored content.
- We say no to bad deals. When a partner pushes a promotion that isn’t actually a good price, we don’t write about it — even when we’d earn a commission.
This isn’t a marketing slogan. It’s how we operate every day. The minute we let commission rate dictate recommendations is the minute our readers stop trusting us, and the business dies.
How to identify affiliate links
Outbound links to our affiliate partners are tagged with rel="sponsored" in the HTML, in line with Google’s webmaster guidelines and the FTC’s expectations for disclosure. When you hover over a link, your browser may also display tracking parameters indicating it’s an affiliate URL. Where context makes it useful, we also note inline that a link is an affiliate link.
FTC compliance statement
In accordance with 16 CFR Part 255 (Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising), Best Vacation Deals discloses that we have a material connection with the travel brands linked to from this site. We receive financial compensation in the form of affiliate commissions when readers complete qualifying bookings via our links. We have made every reasonable effort to make this relationship clear, prominent, and conspicuous throughout the site — including on every page that contains affiliate links, in our footer, and here on this dedicated disclosure page.
What this means for you as a reader
Practically speaking: when you book through a Best Vacation Deals link, you pay the same price you would have paid anyway, you get the same product, and you support the editorial team that helped you find the deal. We are grateful when you do it, and we don’t take it for granted.
Questions
If you have questions about our affiliate relationships, want to know whether a specific recommendation involves a commission, or want to flag a recommendation that doesn’t seem to meet our standards, please email [email protected]. We answer.