Commissions
Affiliates will be paid the following commission on confirmed bookings:
- 2% on all new booking confirmations
PPC
Publishers must NOT:
- Bid on any branded terms including, but not limited to: "The Thinking Traveller", "Thinking Traveller", "TTT villas", "thethinkingtraveller", or any misspelling, variation, or derivative thereof
- Bid on any destination + brand combinations (e.g. "Thinking Traveller Sicily", "Thinking Traveller Greek villas")
- Use The Thinking Traveller brand name in any Google Ads, Bing Ads, or other paid search platform ad copy, display URL, or sitelinks
- Set The Thinking Traveller website or any subdomain as a display URL in paid search adverts
- Bidding on generic (non-branded) luxury travel terms is also prohibited unless the publisher has obtained specific written authorisation.
Please be aware that we carefully monitor paid search on all competitive keywords and ask for your assistance in this process.
All PPC activity is prohibited on all search engines unless expressly authorised in writing by The Thinking Traveller. Any affiliates found to be bidding on brand terms will be removed from the programme. Any commission made on these sales will not be paid by the merchant.
Display URLs
You cannot operate domains that contain trademarks for the sole purpose of driving traffic from search engines.
It is important to note that affiliates must not use the display URL of (https://www.thethinkingtraveller.co.uk/), including any variation of this.
Any affiliate using this display URL may be removed from the programme.
Affiliates may not use the trademark term as a subdomain in their URL e.g.
Affiliates must use their own website which can include trademarks in the sub folders of the display URL e.g: www.affiliatesite.com/thethinkingtraveller
Advertising Disclosure
Publishers must comply with all applicable advertising standards and disclosure requirements. In the UK, this includes ASA/CAP guidelines. All affiliate content must be clearly identified as commercial/affiliate content using appropriate disclosures (e.g., #ad, #affiliate, "This post contains affiliate links").
Email policy
Affiliates are not permitted to send any unsolicited email ("spam") under this Affiliate programme. Should you wish to send out a The Thinking Traveller email please discuss with the programme manager in the first instance.
Purchasing of domain names
Affiliates cannot use any domain names that include the The Thinking Traveller brands.
Discount/Voucher Codes
Only codes that are supplied to affiliates by The Thinking Traveller are valid for affiliate use. Any codes that are found to be displayed on sites that are non-approved will result in commissions being declined. Please make sure any URL strings you grab from The Thinking Traveller site are placed into the deep link generator via your own affiliate account that the URL does not contain any additional tracking information/tags as this will cause the link to not track correctly.
Confirmed Booking Definitions
Commissions will be paid only for new bookings, which excludes Services and Experiences (S&E).
Commissions will be paid for new bookings that are not deduplicated against organic and direct traffic.
Declined Transactions
The Thinking Traveller reserves the right to decline (void) any transaction and commission that:
• Results from fraudulent, deceptive, or artificial means of generating clicks or impressions
• Is a cancellation, chargeback, or refunded booking (whether full or partial)
• Is attributable to an existing customer who has booked with The Thinking Traveller within the previous 24 months
• Was generated through self-referral (publisher or any associated party booking for their own use)
• Was generated by activity that breaches any of these Publisher Terms
• Was generated through cookie stuffing, cookie bombing, or any method of placing tracking cookies without genuine user intent
• Cannot be verified as a genuine referral through our analytics and attribution systems
Trademark Guidelines
In these Terms and Conditions no licence has been granted to use any trademark of The Thinking Traveller or its affiliated companies including, without limitation, the trademarks The Thinking Traveller, White Key Villas, or thethinkingtraveller.co.uk or any confusingly similar names in the following:
- Bidding directly or indirectly for any brand name The Thinking Traveller trademarks or any similar trademarks, misspellings, or derivatives of the trademarks. This applies to all search engines.
- Using The Thinking Traveller trademark misspellings or similar variations in the written copy on adverts, including but not limited to pay-per-click adverts in search engines.
- As part of the main domain that would mislead the consumer to believe that the website is part of The Thinking Traveller, for example, www.thethinkingtravellerdomain.com, however it will be possible to use www.domain.com/thethinkingtraveller (however, this is not for use as a display URL within listings on paid search within search engines, for example, Google. or in an e-mail address).
- Using www.thethinkingtraveller.co.uk as the display URL in Google, or any other paid performance website or generally misleading the consumer into believing the advertisement is from the official www.thethinking traveller.co.uk website. This includes all paid performance keywords.
- For the purpose of diverting customers to websites not owned by The Thinking Traveller or to give priority to websites not owned by The Thinking Traveller over the website www.thethinkingtraveller.co.uk.
- Making or passing off as being owners of The Thinking Traveller's trademarks or taking any action which is likely to confuse or mislead third parties to believe that the affiliates / or website are owners of The Thinking Traveller’s trademarks.
- Registering any URLS that include any of The Thinking Traveller's trademarks, or any version that could be mistaken for an official website.
- Using creatives of The Thinking Traveller in pop-up or pop-under windows, or to link to any website of The Thinking Traveller by embedding them in a frame from the website of the affiliate. It should also be clear to consumers that by clicking on the links of the website owned by The Thinking Traveller they have left the website of the affiliate and are now on a website owned by The Thinking Traveller and that the URL should not be masked in any way.
- Publishers must seek approval before taking/scrapping content from the The Thinking Traveller.co.uk site.
- Using "add to favourite" campaigns that would mislead consumers to think that they are bookmarking a website of The Thinking Traveller when in fact they are bookmarking the website of the affiliate / third party.
Prohibited practices & fraud prevention
Strictly Prohibited Activities
The following activities are strictly prohibited and will result in immediate removal from the programme and forfeiture of all pending commissions:
- Cookie Bombing / Cookie Stuffing: Any method of placing affiliate tracking cookies on a user's browser without their knowledge or genuine interaction. This includes but is not limited to: pop-unders, hidden iframes, forced redirects, zero-pixel images, automatic cookie drops via scripts, or any technique that fires the tracking pixel without a genuine click-through.
- Click Fraud: Generating artificial clicks through automated scripts, bots, click farms, incentivised clicking, or any other means of artificially inflating click metric.
- Adware / Malware / Toolbars: Distributing any software that generates affiliate clicks or cookies without explicit user consent. This includes browser extensions, toolbars, desktop applications, or any software that injects or overwrites affiliate tracking.
- Typosquatting: Registering domain names that are misspellings or variations of "thethinkingtraveller.com" or any of our brand names for the purpose of redirecting traffic through affiliate links.
- Fake Vouchers / Manufactured Deals: Creating, publishing, or distributing fake voucher codes, discount codes, or manufactured "deals" that do not exist. The Thinking Traveller rarely offers promotional discounts. Any voucher code not explicitly provided and confirmed by The Thinking Traveller is considered fraudulent.
- Incentivised Traffic: Offering any form of incentive (cashback, points, rewards, loyalty credits, charity donations, or other consideration) to users for clicking affiliate links or completing bookings via affiliate links.
- URL Masking / Cloaking: Disguising or masking affiliate links in a way that prevents The Thinking Traveller from identifying the traffic source. All traffic must be clearly attributable.
- Self-Referral: Publishers, their employees, family members, or associated parties using their own affiliate links to make bookings.
- Email Spam: Sending unsolicited commercial emails (spam) that include The Thinking Traveller affiliate links. All email marketing must comply with applicable data protection and anti-spam legislation (including GDPR and PECR).
Monitoring & Enforcement
The Thinking Traveller actively monitors affiliate traffic patterns using advanced analytics and attribution tools. We reserve the right to:
• Investigate any suspicious traffic or conversion patterns
• Request evidence of traffic sources and marketing methods from any publisher
• Suspend any publisher pending investigation without prior notice
• Permanently remove any publisher found to be in breach of these terms
• Reverse all commissions (paid and pending) associated with fraudulent or non-compliant activity
• Report fraudulent activity to AWIN and relevant authorities
