{"id":1421,"date":"2023-01-18T10:27:16","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T10:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boostyourblog.com\/?p=1421"},"modified":"2023-01-18T10:37:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T10:37:25","slug":"stay22-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/stay22-review\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Use Stay22&#8217;s Maps &#038; Lists To Boost Your Hotel Affiliate Income"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Stay22 is a hotel affiliate solution that I&#8217;ve been using at Indie Traveller since March 2021. It&#8217;s still somewhat of a newer company, so even if you&#8217;re in the travel niche it&#8217;s possible you haven&#8217;t heard of them yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lately, I&#8217;ve been seeing various discussions in travel blogger Facebook groups about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stay22.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stay22<\/a>, so I thought I would share my direct experiences with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve been able to<strong> 3X my hotel affiliate revenue<\/strong> using Stay22 (based on my pre-pandemic level). However, not all of Stay22&#8217;s tools proved to be equally relevant to my blog, so I&#8217;ll mention which ones converted best for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rank-math-toc-block\" id=\"rank-math-toc\"><h2>Table of Contents<\/h2><nav><ul><li ><a href=\"#what-is-stay-22\">What is Stay22?<\/a><\/li><li ><a href=\"#stay-22-integrations\">Stay22 integrations<\/a><ul><li ><a href=\"#map-view\">Map view<\/a><\/li><li ><a href=\"#strong-list-view-strong\">List view<\/a><\/li><li ><a href=\"#deep-link-tool\">Deep link tool<\/a><\/li><li ><a href=\"#the-pop-feature\">The pop feature<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li ><a href=\"#working-with-stay-22\">Working with Stay22<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-is-stay-22\">What is Stay22?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay22 started off as a solution for adding interactive maps showing hotel booking options. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s still what they emphasize most, but they&#8217;ve expanded into offering deep-linking tools, hotel list views, and several other hotel affiliate revenue generation tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their tools support a range of hotel affiliate programs including Booking, Hotels.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor, and VRBO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The two key things to know:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>You don&#8217;t need to be a direct affiliate<\/strong>. If you&#8217;re not in, say, the Booking affiliate program directly that&#8217;s fine. You can simply make Booking.com links through Stay22. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>You (probably) won&#8217;t lose on commission by using Stay22<\/strong>. Unless you have a special negotiated rate or are in a high tier with one of the third-party affiliates, it&#8217;s likely you&#8217;ll get at least the same commissions via Stay22 as going direct. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay22 has its own relationships with these third-parties (such as Expedia or Booking) and has negotiated its own rates, which is why they can typically pass on the same commissions to you. However, it&#8217;s worth taking your own look at the rates, as in certain circumstances you may be better off going direct, for example if you get a very high volume of hotel bookings. <em>(In my case, with Booking I&#8217;m actually 0.5% better off with Stay22<\/em>.<em>)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The sites that are part of the Expedia group will also give you commission for products besides hotel bookings through Stay22, such as flights or car rentals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I see two key reasons for working with Stay22: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Having a &#8216;one stop shop&#8217; for hotel affiliates. <\/strong>It&#8217;s easier to make deeplinks for Booking, Expedia, VRBO, etc. all from one location.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Using Stay22&#8217;s tools to increase your conversions. <\/strong>They help you present hotels in different ways that may make it more enticing for your readers to click and book. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The latter has been the main reason for me to use Stay22. As I mentioned earlier, it&#8217;s helped me triple my hotel affiliate income, and I&#8217;ve heard of other cases where bloggers achieved an even bigger boost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"stay-22-integrations\">Stay22 integrations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"map-view\">Map view<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the widget that Stay22 originally launched with. The map can be great for some sites, especially (in my view) with content about very specific places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview-1024x752.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1493\" width=\"509\" height=\"374\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview-1024x752.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview-300x220.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview-768x564.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview.jpg 1324w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 509px) 100vw, 509px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>To be honest, I&#8217;ve had limited success with it, as a lot of my travel guides share fairly high-level information about a country. And I believe the exact location of a hotel is not as important to many of my users as other aspects like price\/room type\/etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It seems this map view was originally targeted at companies that host events. For this, it makes a lot of sense as users probably want to know if a hotel option is close enough to the event space or conference center. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve seen implementations on other travel sites that made me think the map aligned well with the user intent. For example, I saw that <a href=\"https:\/\/rove.me\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rove.me<\/a> uses Stay22 maps for some of its very specific travel recommendations, such as visiting events like this <a href=\"https:\/\/rove.me\/to\/wyoming\/casper-balloon-roundup\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">air balloon festival<\/a>. (You can see the maps by scrolling down.) Users probably want to see accommodation directly around these specific pinpoints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can also see the maps working very well if you blog about specific neighbourhoods in cities, where the user may be motivated to find a hotel in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As always,<strong> it&#8217;s worth testing it out, <\/strong>as every blog and audience is different. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><i class=\"icon-right-hand\"><\/i> <strong>Tip: <\/strong>you can clean up the look of these maps by disabling some of the buttons. Here&#8217;s the embed code I used to present a simpler map. I also added a custom font. Replace &#8216;xxx&#8217; with your data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>&lt;iframe id=\"stay22-widget\" width=\"100%\" height=\"480\" src=\"xxxxx&amp;lat=xxxxx&amp;lng=xxxx&amp;customfont=Open%20Sans&amp;customfontlink=https%3A%2F%2Ffonts.googleapis.com%2Fcss2%3Ffamily%3DOpen%2BSans%3Awght%40600%26display%3Dswap&amp;hidecurrency=true&amp;hideheatmap=true&amp;hideinfomenu=true&amp;hidelanguage=true&amp;hidemainmarkercover=true&amp;hidepriceper=true&amp;hidesearchbar=true&amp;hideenlargemap=true&amp;hidesettings=true&amp;disabledirections=true&amp;isnear=false&amp;minguestrating=4\" frameborder=\"0\"&gt;&lt;\/iframe&gt;<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"strong-list-view-strong\"><strong>List view<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay22 is currently beta-testing this new functionality. It only works with Booking.com at the moment but I&#8217;m sure other platforms will be added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve been testing out List view in the last couple of months and I&#8217;ve had some early success with it. I customize the results by limiting them to a certain price range (so that I&#8217;m not recommending 5-star hotels to my budget-conscious audience). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/listview-1024x860.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1494\" width=\"509\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/listview-1024x860.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/listview-300x252.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/listview-768x645.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/listview.jpg 1295w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 509px) 100vw, 509px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>(Note: the header styling is part of my theme, not the widget.)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I would love to see more visual customization options so that I can make this look less like a widget. I&#8217;ve found that the less widget-y an affiliate link looks, the more likely it&#8217;ll lead to conversions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fortunately, the list view is already pretty clean to begin with, making it look more informational and less like an ad. When I can adjust the colors and other elements to blend into my blog theme, I&#8217;ll start using this a lot more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"deep-link-tool\">Deep link tool<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>This is probably the simplest tool that Stay22 offers and yet it&#8217;s the one I love the most! It lets you easily create links to specific hotel properties on any of their partner sites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/deeplinktool-1024x892.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1498\" width=\"386\" height=\"336\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/deeplinktool-1024x892.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/deeplinktool-300x261.png 300w, https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/deeplinktool-768x669.png 768w, https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/deeplinktool.png 1146w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 386px) 100vw, 386px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Creating hotel deep links has always been such a pain that I&#8217;ve often avoided or forgotten to include them in my content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s annoying to have to log into multiple different partner sites to make them. I also used to be part of a special invite-only Booking.com program on CJ.com and I almost never used it because the process of creating deep links on this platform made me pull my hair out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Having Stay22&#8217;s deeplink tool has made it so much easier for me to just put hotel links into my content quickly. Just by removing some friction, it&#8217;s led me to deep-link to hotel pages a lot more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-pop-feature\">The pop feature<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Stay22 is not sharing that many details about how this new feature works yet, but I&#8217;m in the beta program and it&#8217;s resulted in a dramatic<em> <\/em>increase in my conversions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For specific users who have already shown an interest in booking hotels, it will pop up a booking page while they are browsing my blog. This is a rare event to occur as it&#8217;s highly targeted to specific users, but as it turns out, it&#8217;s extremely successful at generating conversions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Best of all, this is a feature that works automatically so you don&#8217;t have to insert anything manually into any posts for it to work. It&#8217;s the pop feature that has had a very big impact on my earnings, alongside my manual deeplinks and list views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"working-with-stay-22\">Working with Stay22<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In my experience, the team at Stay22 is extremely friendly and eager to work with new partners. I like working with them a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On blogger forums and groups, I&#8217;ve seen a few people express suspicion at the way they&#8217;ve been approached by the Stay22 team. This surprised me at first but I think it&#8217;s just due to the fact that many independent bloggers have little experience with receiving sales calls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe Stay22 started out being very B2B focused, focusing on event companies and not independent\/self-employed bloggers. It&#8217;s quite a different style of communication in B2B that may come across as a little strong. Since I&#8217;d done B2B calls and meetings when I worked for a larger organization nothing seemed out of the ordinary to me. And I regularly see praise from those who are in their program about their communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So don&#8217;t worry, they&#8217;re just a friendly mid-sized company eager to work with more partners. Also: they&#8217;re Canadian. They can&#8217;t help being very friendly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve found Stay22 to be very communicative and great to work with. Incredibly, I have an account manager who I can reach with questions and who gives me updates. This is in huge contrast with some direct affiliate relations I have where they don&#8217;t even reply to my support tickets. I think Stay22&#8217;s support is right up there with the likes of Mediavine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, they are still developing their suite of solutions, and their platform could still be further improved. It&#8217;d be amazing to have Agoda and Hostelworld added as then I&#8217;d be able to have all my accommodation programs under one roof. Features like the list view are also still in beta and I&#8217;m eager to be able to customize it more so that it fully blends into my blog theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, it&#8217;s overall been proven to be a great new revenue stream for Indie Traveller and I  recommend giving them a try for your blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stay22 is a hotel affiliate solution that I&#8217;ve been using at Indie Traveller since March 2021. It&#8217;s still somewhat of a newer company, so even if you&#8217;re in the travel niche it&#8217;s possible you haven&#8217;t heard of them yet. Lately, I&#8217;ve been seeing various discussions in travel blogger Facebook groups about Stay22, so I thought &#8230; <a title=\"How To Use Stay22&#8217;s Maps &#038; Lists To Boost Your Hotel Affiliate Income\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/stay22-review\/\" aria-label=\"More on How To Use Stay22&#8217;s Maps &#038; Lists To Boost Your Hotel Affiliate Income\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview.jpg",1324,972,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview-300x220.jpg",300,220,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview-768x564.jpg",768,564,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview-1024x752.jpg",1024,752,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview.jpg",1324,972,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/mapview.jpg",1324,972,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Marek","author_link":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/author\/marek\/"},"uagb_comment_info":3,"uagb_excerpt":"Stay22 is a hotel affiliate solution that I&#8217;ve been using at Indie Traveller since March 2021. It&#8217;s still somewhat of a newer company, so even if you&#8217;re in the travel niche it&#8217;s possible you haven&#8217;t heard of them yet. Lately, I&#8217;ve been seeing various discussions in travel blogger Facebook groups about Stay22, so I thought&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1421"}],"version-history":[{"count":129,"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1862,"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions\/1862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boostyourblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}