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Welcome Package V1.2.0
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Program Highlights You will find everything you need to get started with EAN here in the
Welcome Package. Simply click the links below to jump to the section
you wish to read.
Welcome to Expedia Affiliate Network! 3
The Basics 4
Your Site 5
Marketing Your Site 8
Getting Paid 9
Statistics and Reporting 12
Contact Us 12
Appendix 13
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Welcome to Expedia Affiliate
Network! Thank you for signing up with the Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN).
We are excited to welcome you to our fast growing network of affiliates and provide you
with a wealth of tools and resources to get your travel business growing. This document
provides an introduction to our program and covers the basics you will need to know to
understand how the EAN program works. We will touch on everything from marketing your
site to earning commissions and reporting. For more detailed information on customizing
your site please refer to our instructional User Guide, or if instead you choose to
integrate using our flexible APIs, visit the EAN Developer Hub for more information.
With access to more than 130,000 hotels worldwide and some of the most competitive
rates and inventory in the industry, EAN will provide your customers exactly what they‘re
shopping for. Expedia Affiliate Network‘s dedicated team will support your site‘s
initiatives and provide years of retailing expertise to help grow your travel business.
If you have questions about the program or need information beyond what is covered
here, please feel free to reach out to an EAN Account Manager at [email protected].
Thank you again for choosing to partner with Expedia Affiliate Network. We look forward
to working with you!
The Expedia Affiliate Network Team
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The Basics Welcome Email and CID
Upon completing the EAN online sign-up process, you will receive an automated email with important
information about your account. This email contains your Client ID, or CID, which is how we track your
bookings and pay your commissions. Please use this number in all correspondence with us.
Affiliate Center
EAN affiliates have access to the Affiliate Center, a resource center that contains important
information and tools for all our partners. You can access the Affiliate Center by visiting
www.expediaaffiliate.com and logging in with the credentials you received in your Welcome Email. In
the Affiliate Center, you can track commissions, customize your travel site, and take advantage of a
wide array of marketing and merchandising resources to grow your business. To learn more about the
Affiliate Center, download our User Guide and review Chapter 2.
Check out the Affiliate Center today!
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The EAN Blog
For helpful tips and the latest news, visit the EAN Blog. Here we post about new
products, how to use our tools, and even relevant ideas to grow your business.
Bookmark the EAN Blog today, as you will want to check back often!
Where to find us
The fastest and most reliable way to contact us is by email at [email protected]. Please be sure to
include your CID in all communications, so we can ensure a quick and accurate response. For the latest
updates and announcements, you can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Your Site Integration
Registering online with EAN gives you access to our next-generation hotel platform, Chameleon.
Chameleon is our private label template solution that enables your customers to start booking hotels
immediately. You can integrate Chameleon into an existing site, or direct traffic straight to your
Chameleon site. However, if you are interested in building a custom site or mobile application using
our flexible APIs and developer tools, please visit the EAN Developer Hub to learn more and apply for
API access.
Chameleon
Chameleon makes it easy for you to start selling and earn commissions immediately. Chameleon is an
easy to use and flexible solution for affiliates, using industry best practices and leverages more than 15
years of user experience research. Chameleon provides a simple self-serve solution, so you can
customize your site, preview changes, and publish them in real-time. The best part is that no technical
experience is required — so you can get started right away. Take a look at our Chameleon User Guide,
a detailed manual explaining all features and functions of the platform, should you have any questions
or simply want to get the most out of Chameleon.
Learn more about Chameleon on our resource page, or login to the Affiliate Center and select Control
Panel to get started.
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For Travelers
Chameleon provides an unparalleled, end-to-end user experience. With enhanced filters, multiple
shopping views, and a simple two-step check out, it is an easy way to book that perfect hotel.
There are more than 110 customizable features making Chameleon more flexible than ever. It has
never been easier to meet the needs of your target audience.
My Link
The dedicated link to your Chameleon site is below. This is your unique URL to be used when linking to
EAN and it contains your CID, which is how we track customer bookings that originate from your site.
Simply exchange your CID for the XXXXXX below, and you will have your dedicated URL.
http://www.travelnow.com/templates/XXXXXX
Customize inventory and look and feel, and
build as many sites as you want!
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This link isn‘t the only way to send customers to your affiliate pages. We offer other linking options,
such as using deep links to direct traffic to specific properties or destinations. You also have the option
of masking your EAN links with a different domain name. Please refer to the Chameleon User Guide for
the full range of linking options and more detailed information regarding domain masking.
Top User Tips for Customizing Your Site
New affiliates frequently ask us for a list of best practices when they are ready to integrate EAN into
their site, so we‘ve pulled together the top three user tips. These are the three easiest and most
important things to customize when getting started.
1. Header and Footer. This gives your site its own identity, look and feel, and it will help the user
experience appear seamless throughout the entire booking path. We highly recommend uploading
your own header and footer.
2. Search Form. There are lots of search form options with Chameleon — it‘s possible to add or
remove radio buttons, choose a vertical or horizontal layout, or even select custom colors. You can
tailor your search form to meet the needs of your customers, your brand, or your business purpose.
Search forms can also be placed on your site and modified to fit into spaces with fixed height and
width constraints. Most importantly, search forms allow customers to search for hotels directly
from your website.
3. Inventory. Whether your audience is interested in luxury hotels, pet-friendly accommodations, or
discount hotels in a certain city, Chameleon enables you to control which hotels are shown on your
site to provide an optimized user experience.
EAN supports 29 currencies and 33 languages, all of which are offered on your site.
You can select the currency and language settings you prefer for your site, or simply use our
default geo-location function already enabled in your template. The geo-location function defaults
the display currency based on the customer‘s IP address location. The display language is
determined by the default language setting within the customer‘s browser.
Instructions on how to import your custom header and footer, customizing search forms and colors, and
modifying inventory displayed on your site can all be found in the Chameleon User Guide.
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Marketing Your Site Merchandising Central is a new merchandising solution that enables EAN partners to easily build
merchandising widgets, pages, and feeds for their sites and email campaigns — and it takes minutes to
create and publish a campaign.
Using Merchandising Central to build promotional widgets and pages for your site is a great way to drive
bookings. In fact, more than 17% of gross bookings on Expedia sites come from customers who visit
merchandising pages. It is easy to get started, simply log in to the Affiliate Center and navigate to the
‗Marketing‘ tab, or visit our Merchandising Central page to learn more.
Affiliate Advantages
No merchandising or campaign production costs.
It only takes a few minutes to create and publish a campaign.
Build campaigns to your brand guidelines (for seamless integration into your site pages).
Multiply customer touch points.
Increase relevancy of message and conversion by selecting what hotels to offer your audience.
Create and test as many campaigns as you want.
Property Databases
EAN has a number of property databases available to help you build custom merchandising on your site.
We have databases containing amenity information, full text property descriptions, interior and
exterior property images, and much more. It is important to regularly download and update property
data if used on your site to ensure you have the most current property information. These databases
are located under ―Merchandising Resources‖ within the Affiliate Center.
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Deals Databases
We also provide databases that contain information on destination sales and property promotions; we
call them Blockbusters. The Blockbusters file provides you with relevant deals to promote on your site
that offer your customers huge savings such as ―4th Night Free‖ and ―30% off your stay‖. These
databases leverage some of the great discounts secured by Expedia and Hotels.com, and make them
available to your customers. You can locate these deals under the Merchandising tab of the Affiliate
Center or here.
Getting Paid How Commissions Work
To get paid commission on a booking, a visitor to your site must make a reservation using your CID and
then consume their reservation. This means that the person making the reservation shows up and
completes their stay without canceling.
Commission payments to our affiliates are made once a month and can be viewed in the Stats section
of the Affiliate Center, simply log in at www.expediaaffiliate.com and navigate to the ‗Stats‘ section.
Commission payments will only be made once an affiliate earns a minimum of $50 in commission.
When do I get paid?
Commissions are paid out on the 15th of every month, and are calculated based on
commissions that have been accumulated from the previous month. Commissions
are calculated monthly based on net value (without taxes or fees) of consumed
bookings made through your Chameleon page.
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Merchant vs. Agency bookings
Merchant hotel reservations are fully prepaid by the customer at the time of booking, backed by our
Price Match Guarantee, and available both online and offline. Merchant hotel commissions accrue to
your account the month following customer check-out. Agency hotel reservations require a credit card
to reserve a room, and in most cases the customer pays for the hotel stay upon check-out. Agency
commission accrual will vary and generally takes longer since the hotels send the commission to EAN,
and we in turn post the commission to your account. For prompt payment, it is in your best interest to
promote Merchant hotels when possible.
How are Commissions Paid?
Your commission check will arrive by mail to the name and contact information we have on file at the
time the payment is generated. However, if you would prefer to receive your payment by Electronic
Funds Transfer (EFT), you may scan and email a signed EFT form to [email protected], or fax
completed forms directly to Affiliate Accounting at (417) 520-1159. Remember that payments are only
made when the amount to be paid is higher than $50 USD. If the amount in any given month is below
this threshold, the outstanding amount will be rolled over to the following month or until it reaches the
minimum payment limit.
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Tax Form
Although you can start earning commissions immediately upon sign-up, we are not able to pay out
earned commissions to affiliates until your tax forms have been completed. Tax information should be
completed upon sign-up and updated annually so we can report this income to the IRS.
When you first login to the Affiliate Center, you should be prompted to fill out a simple tax form, but
if you aren‘t, simply navigate to the ‗Account‘ tab and select ‗Tax Forms‘. If you are based in the U.S.,
please fill out Form W-9. If you are based outside the U.S., please complete Form W-8BEN showing U.S.
tax authorities that you are not based in the United States. All affiliates are required to complete this
step before receiving their commission payments. If you have any questions about the form, we
recommend you refer to the FAQ section on the form or consult a tax professional.
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Statistics and Reporting We provide you with access to comprehensive reporting tools where you can monitor transactions and
expected commissions online. You simply log in to the Affiliate Center and click on the ‗Stats‘ tab to
get started. You can check:
Account Summary – gives you an overview of transactions and expected commission in the current
payment cycle.
Stats Generator – Provides customizable reporting that shows all the details of bookings and
commission for up to a 45-day period.
Please note that to see the ‗Paid‘ column, you must select the ‗View as Parent‘ checkbox when you log
in to Stats. For more information on how to run reports and to obtain definitions of the terms used in
our reporting, please refer to the Appendix.
Fast Facts:
Statistics are loaded at the end of the day
Commissions are calculated on the hotel base-rate, exclusive of taxes and fees
Commissions are based on the checkout date of the visitor
Contact Us If you have any questions or need support, please contact us via email and remember
to include your CID number in all correspondence:
Email: [email protected]
Please allow up to 48 hours before following up on any requests. We look forward to hearing from you!
— EAN Account Management
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Appendix
Account Summary Report
For a brief overview of your account‘s performance and to monitor your commission for the current
month, you can consult the Account Summary report. To do this, you will need to log in to the Affiliate
Center and navigate to the Stats tab, and select Account Summary
www.ean.com > Affiliate Center Home > Stats > Account Summary
Definition of Terms:
Last Check Mailed — shows the history of payments spanning the previous 24 months
Amount Accrued Towards Next Check — the total amount of commissions paid during the current
month only
Bookings Since:
Expected Commissions — the amount to be expected as commission once the booking is
consumed*
Confirmed Reservations — the amount in reservations waiting to be consumed
Canceled Reservations — a customer may have canceled after making a reservation. There is
no commission for these cancellations.
In Queue for Help — in case we need to contact the hotel to arrange the booking for the
client, a reservation will appear here.
*Please note this figure only includes commissions earned in the current month.
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Sample of Last Check Mailed:
If you click on Last Check Mailed, you will see a history of previous check payments. By clicking on
each check date you can view a complete list of bookings for that payment. Please note that check
history is only available for the last 24 months.
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Stats Generator To generate statistics for a time period you can select the parameters of your choice and the type of
booking against which the parameters should be run. There are two options:
1. By Type of Booking:
a. Consumed Bookings. A consumer is considered as having consumed the booking when he/she
has checked out of the hotel and therefore completed their stay.
b. Booking Day. This is the date when the customer books the hotel, either online or by phone.
2. By Check Search — this will provide the details for what commissions have been paid for the
specific month selected in the Stats generator.
Next you‘ll want to choose what data is included in the report. You can do this by either selecting
specific fields or clicking the ‗Check All‘ button. The report will run when you click the ‘Submit‘
button.
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Sample Statistics
Under the ―How Commissions Work‖ section, we talked about the difference between Merchant and
Agency hotels, and how they differ in the way commissions are paid. Below you will find sample reports
on these two types of bookings.
Merchant Hotels
Offline and Agency Hotels
Contact Us:
If you have questions regarding reporting or your commission payment, please contact
[email protected] and include your CID to ensure a timely and accurate response.
CALL indicates the
booking was made
through our call center,
or offline
This booking was made, but
canceled (CX), and therefore
will not pay a commission.
A number in the Paid column
indicates the booking was consumed
and therefore commission paid. You
will receive it in the next check
cycle.
Dte Pd indicates the date
the commission was paid
out in a previous check
The commission for this booking
will be paid as soon as we have
collected payment from the hotel,
until then $0.00 will be reflected in
this column
