November 29, 2021
I stopped paying a hotel concierge his commission for two months. Not on purpose. I got busy, the invoice got buried, and I told myself I'd sort it in the next payment run. I didn't. And then one day the bookings from that hotel just quietly stopped coming in.
I called him. He was polite about it. Said he'd been sending guests to a boat company down the road because they had a guy who came by every Friday with an envelope and a handshake. I can't even be mad. That's how it works. He had guests to send somewhere and I had gone silent on him for eight weeks. Of course he moved on.
That concierge taught me more about running an affiliate program than any marketing article I've ever read. The program doesn't live in the launch. It lives in the follow-up.
When most tour operators hear "affiliate program" they think influencers, blog links, commission platforms. Forget all that for a minute.
For a tour and activity business in the Caribbean, your real affiliates are the people who talk to your guests before you do. Hotel concierges. Taxi drivers picking up guests at the airport. The dive shop at the marina who gets asked every morning what else there is to do. The watersport rental place on the beach. The bartender who knows every guest by name by day two.
These people already have the conversation. They're already being asked "what should I do while I'm here?" Every day. You're just not in the answer yet.
This is different from OTA distribution. Viator and GetYourGuide get you in front of strangers searching online. A local affiliate gets you in front of a guest who is already on the island, ready to book, and guided by someone they just spent twenty minutes with in a car or at a desk. That trust is worth a lot.
I'd say 10% to 15% is the right range for most operators.
Ten percent makes sense for low-touch affiliates -- hotel activity desks, dive shops who mention you in passing, guesthouses that leave your flyer at the front desk. They send you guests but they're not selling hard.
Fifteen percent is for the active ones. The taxi driver who has your business card in his visor and tells every fare about your sunset run. The bartender who closes bookings on his phone right there at the bar. These people are doing real sales work on your behalf and they should be paid like it.
Don't overthink the rate. Set it, communicate it clearly, and then hold it. Nothing kills an affiliate relationship faster than quietly dropping someone's rate six months in because your margins got tight.
Every affiliate needs a unique tracking code or booking link. Every single one.
This is not optional. Without it, you can't tell who sent you what. You can't pay accurately, you can't see which affiliates are performing, and you end up doing the thing I did -- guessing, falling behind, losing partners.
Most booking software handles this automatically. If you're on Junglebee, agent codes are built in -- each affiliate gets their own, bookings tag to them automatically, and the report is just there when you need it. You shouldn't be building a spreadsheet for this in 2025. That's exactly how payments get missed.
Give each affiliate their code in writing on day one. If you're sending a taxi driver a booking link, make it short enough he can text it to guests without it breaking.
Pick a date -- the first, the fifteenth, whatever -- and pay on that date every month, without them having to ask. Include a statement showing each booking they sent, the tour amount, and the commission. Even if it's two bookings for $45, send it.
The statement matters more than the amount. It tells your affiliate that you see their work. It keeps them honest, too -- if they sent a guest who didn't book through their code, they can flag it. And when the amounts are small, that transparency is what keeps people in the relationship.
An affiliate who has not been paid on time, or not heard from you in three months, has already moved on. I am telling you this from direct experience. They have another operator's envelope in their desk. They're not angry at you -- they've just filled the slot with someone who showed up.
Every three months, send your active affiliates a small package. Not a newsletter. Not a "hope you're well" email. Two things:
Most of your competitors are not doing this. The ones who are doing it are getting the bookings.
Once a year, invite your five highest-performing affiliates on a familiarization trip. Free. Full tour. Lunch included. The same experience your guests get.
I know a taxi driver in Simpson Bay who sent almost nothing for the first few months he had our code. Then he came on a FAM trip -- half-day snorkel run to Tintamarre, the full thing. After that he became one of our top three referrers that season. Not because his client base changed. Because he had actually done the trip. He could describe the fish, the water color, the food. He wasn't reciting a brochure. He was telling a story.
The commission gets people in the room. The follow-up keeps them. The FAM trip turns an affiliate into someone who genuinely believes in what you're selling. That's the secret weapon -- and it's basically free to run once a year.
The mechanics are not complicated. Unique codes, monthly payments, a quarterly check-in, a yearly FAM trip for the top performers. You can set this up in a week. The tracking and the payouts are the boring part, and the boring part is what most operators get wrong.
They launch with enthusiasm, pay the first two months, then get busy running tours and stop following up. The affiliates feel it. They go quiet. Three months later the operator wonders why the referrals dried up.
The concierge I lost didn't stop sending guests because he was disloyal. He stopped because I stopped showing up. When I fixed that with the next concierge -- showed up every month with a statement, every quarter with photos, every year with a seat on the boat -- the referrals held. And grew.
Build the program that shows up. Not the one that launches.
