For a long time, hotel affiliate marketing wasn’t really a priority for me. Of course, I included links to accommodations in my travel articles, but I wasn’t constantly creating affiliate links for every hotel I mentioned or optimizing existing articles specifically for hotel bookings. I also used the Dutch affiliate platform LinkPizza to automatically monetize some of my links, which was convenient, although it meant that part of the commission went to an additional intermediary platform.
That changed when I installed Stay22 on my travel blogs 14 months ago. Stay22 automates a large part of accommodation affiliate marketing through features such as Nova, Spark and automatic link conversion. I also create my own Stay22 affiliate links and use the Stay22 API to display hotel blocks with current accommodations and prices within my articles.
Stay22 has since become one of the affiliate solutions I’m most enthusiastic about. Not because I’ve suddenly started promoting far more accommodations, but because much of the work happens automatically in the background. Over the past 14 months, my two travel websites have generated almost 400 bookings through Stay22. Based on the number of pageviews during that period, Stay22 has generated an average of more than $9 per 1,000 pageviews for me. For comparison, Stay22 currently estimates earnings of around $7 to $12 per 1,000 pageviews for a travel publisher. My own average of more than $9 per 1,000 pageviews falls right within that range.
In this article, I’ll explain how Stay22 works, which features I use on my own travel blogs, and the results I’ve seen after 14 months.
Read this article in DutchWhat is Stay22?
Stay22 is an affiliate platform designed to help publishers monetize travel content. The platform works with major travel companies including Booking.com, Expedia, Tripadvisor, GetYourGuide, Kayak, Hotels.com and Vrbo. It allows travel bloggers and other publishers to earn commission when readers make a booking through their content. And it’s not limited to hotels and other accommodations. Stay22 can also be used to earn money from other travel products, including tours, activities and transportation.
What makes Stay22 different from more traditional affiliate programs for me is the automation. You can create your own affiliate links, but by installing a single script on your website, Stay22 can also monetize existing links automatically and identify other opportunities to generate bookings.
Stay22 now calls this the Stay22 Script. Previously, it was known as Let Me Allez or LMA. The script powers several Stay22 features, including LinkSwap, Spark and Nova.
How does Stay22 work?
After creating an account, you add your website to Stay22. You can then use the Script Builder to generate a script and install it on your website. If you have several websites, you can manage multiple domains from the same Stay22 account. I use Stay22 on two travel blogs: one in Dutch and one in English. My English-language travel blog has only been online since May 2025, so the two websites differ considerably in age, amount of content, and traffic. For the results later in this article, I’ve combined the figures from both websites.
Once the Stay22 Script is active, it can perform several tasks automatically. This means you don’t have to go through every existing article manually looking for places where you could add another affiliate link.
Automatically monetizing existing links with LinkSwap
One of the easiest Stay22 features is LinkSwap. Stay22 recognizes existing links to supported travel providers and can automatically convert them into monetized links. Readers still end up on the website you originally linked to, but the tracking is handled through Stay22. This is particularly useful if you already have a large amount of travel content. Instead of going through hundreds of older articles and manually replacing regular hotel links with affiliate links, LinkSwap can take care of them automatically. New links can also be included.
Before using Stay22, I monetized some of my links in a similar way through LinkPizza. That worked well and was equally easy to use, but LinkPizza acted as an additional intermediary and received part of the commission.
I therefore can’t say that my earnings increased by a specific percentage after switching to Stay22. I don’t have a reliable like-for-like comparison because I tracked my accommodation affiliate earnings much less closely at the time and wasn’t actively promoting hotels to the same extent. What my Stay22 results have shown me, however, is that accommodations can be a much more interesting source of revenue for my websites than I previously thought.
What is Stay22 Spark?
Spark is another Stay22 feature I use. While LinkSwap monetizes links that are already present on a page, Spark looks for opportunities within your content where there isn’t a link yet. For example, if you mention a hotel in an article without linking to it, Spark may recognize that opportunity and automatically add a relevant link. According to Stay22, Spark uses AI to identify commercial opportunities within existing content.
For me, this is particularly useful because of the amount of content already published on my websites. There are plenty of older articles where I’ve mentioned accommodations without deliberately adding an affiliate link at the time. I don’t have to go through every one of those articles manually to find potential opportunities.
That doesn’t mean I never review my older content myself. For articles that receive a lot of traffic, I still deliberately add accommodations and links when they’re useful to the reader. I see Spark primarily as an additional layer that works in the background.
What is Stay22 Nova?
Nova works differently. Rather than looking only at the content of a page, the technology also tries to recognize when a visitor shows a clear intention to make a booking. Stay22 analyzes visitor behavior in real time and uses that information to determine when a relevant accommodation offer might be useful. Nova isn’t activated for every visitor. The system selects visitors who, according to its model, are sufficiently likely to be interested in booking a trip. According to Stay22, Nova works without cookies and its technology has been trained on billions of pageviews. The goal is to generate additional bookings without requiring you to manually place affiliate links everywhere on your website.
I use Nova on my travel websites, and this is one of the things I find particularly interesting about Stay22. Not every reader follows the path you expect them to take. Someone might read an article without clicking on my hotel recommendation while still being in the middle of planning a trip. Nova attempts to recognize booking intent among these visitors as well.
Want to try Stay22 yourself? You can sign up for free through my referral link. Once you’ve reached 100 confirmed bookings, you’ll receive a $100 bonus.
What is Stay22 Retail?
Stay22 originally focused primarily on monetizing travel content, but the platform is now expanding into retail as well. Stay22 Retail allows publishers to earn commission from products and online stores that aren’t directly related to booking a trip.
Retail is an extension of Nova. The technology analyzes both the content of a page and visitor behavior to determine whether there is purchase intent. When it identifies that intent, Stay22 can open a relevant offer from an online retailer in a new tab. According to Stay22, this only happens after a visitor has interacted with the page, for example by scrolling, clicking, or tapping. The page itself isn’t altered and no product widgets or pop-ups are added.
For Retail, Stay22 works with brands and retailers including Walmart, Nike, Target, Sephora and Best Buy. The offers available depend, among other things, on the visitor and the market in which Stay22 is active. Stay22 Retail is still being rolled out gradually and isn’t available in every market yet. Current coverage includes the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, and Spain, making it particularly interesting for blogs and websites with visitors from these countries.
Creating your own affiliate links with Stay22
Although Stay22 automates a lot, I also regularly create my own affiliate links. I mainly do this when I deliberately want to link to a specific accommodation within an article. With the Allez Link Generator, you can turn a regular URL from a supported provider into a Stay22 affiliate link. This is useful, for example, when linking to a specific hotel you’ve stayed at yourself or an accommodation you recommend in an article.
For me, this remains an important part of Stay22. Automation is useful, but when I know exactly which accommodation is relevant, I prefer to decide for myself where the link should appear. The link generator is also useful in places where the Stay22 Script isn’t running, such as newsletters and other external content.
Creating hotel blocks with the Stay22 API
Another Stay22 feature I’ve started using more recently is the API. It allows you to retrieve data from Stay22 and display it on your website in your own way. I use the API to create custom hotel blocks within my articles. I enter a destination and relevant accommodations are automatically retrieved. Readers immediately see a selection of hotels that match the destination, including current pricing information, and can click through directly from the block.
What I particularly like about this is that a hotel block fits much more naturally into a travel article than a traditional advertising banner. If I’m writing about a destination, I can display a few relevant accommodations at a logical point within the article without having to search for and add each hotel manually every time.
The API does require more technical knowledge than installing the standard Stay22 Script. For most bloggers, I would therefore recommend starting with the script, Nova, Spark, and regular affiliate links. The API becomes more interesting if you want to integrate Stay22 more deeply into your own website.
Stay22 Map
Stay22 also offers an interactive accommodation map that you can embed on a website. Visitors can use the map to explore accommodations within a particular area and then click through to book. I don’t really use this feature myself. My Stay22 experience is therefore mainly based on Nova, Spark, the affiliate links I create myself and the hotel blocks I use through the API.
My Stay22 results
Ultimately, there’s one thing I find particularly important with any affiliate platform: does it actually generate revenue? After 14 months, I can give a fairly clear answer when it comes to Stay22. My two travel blogs have generated almost 400 bookings through the platform.
To make the results easier to compare, I looked at revenue per 1,000 pageviews. I combined the Stay22 results from my Dutch and English travel websites and compared them with the total number of pageviews across both sites during the same period. Together, my websites received almost 400,000 pageviews over those 14 months. That means Stay22 generated an average of more than $9 per 1,000 pageviews.
I also find the number of bookings interesting. With almost 400 bookings from around 400,000 pageviews, that works out to roughly one Stay22 booking for every 1,000 pageviews.
There is an important caveat, though. My English-language travel blog is relatively new and only launched on May 1, 2025. It was still building its visibility in Google during this period and naturally received very little traffic during its first few months. Results can therefore vary considerably from one period to another.
An average like this also doesn’t tell you how much another travel blog will automatically earn with Stay22. An article about the best hotels in Rome has very different booking intent from a general article about Italy. Destination, visitor location, season, and type of content all play a role.
Do I earn more with Stay22 than before?
This is more difficult to answer with hard numbers. Before I started using Stay22, I was much less focused on accommodation affiliate marketing. I used services such as LinkPizza to automatically monetize certain links, but I wasn’t tracking how much hotel booking revenue I generated for every 1,000 pageviews. For that reason, I can’t reliably say that my revenue has doubled or tripled since I started using Stay22.
What I can say is that Stay22 now generates more affiliate revenue for my travel blogs than the other affiliate solutions I currently use. Combined with the fact that a significant part of the process is automated, that’s the main reason I’m so enthusiastic about it. It has also made me much more aware of accommodations as a potential revenue source. In the past, I would mainly link to a hotel if it happened to come up naturally in an article. Now, I also deliberately look at where an accommodation recommendation genuinely adds something useful for the reader.
How much does Stay22 pay per booking?
There is no fixed amount you earn for each Stay22 booking. Commission depends on factors including the booking partner, the value of the booking, and the agreement Stay22 has with that partner. Stay22 operates on a revenue-share model. According to Stay22, the publisher’s share starts at 30% of the commission Stay22 itself receives from the booking partner. This also means that two bookings can generate very different amounts. A weekend at an inexpensive hotel will naturally produce a different result from a two-week stay at an expensive resort.
Advantages of Stay22
After using Stay22 for 14 months, automation is the biggest advantage for me. I don’t have to manually create an affiliate link for every article and every accommodation I mention. Existing links can be monetized, Spark can identify additional opportunities, and Nova attempts to recognize booking intent among visitors. At the same time, I still have plenty of control over the accommodations I actively want to promote. I can create my own Stay22 links, and the API allows me to incorporate hotel information into my articles in a way that fits my website.
Another major advantage is simply that Stay22 converts well for me. Almost 400 bookings in 14 months is a significant number, especially considering that before using Stay22 I wasn’t particularly focused on promoting accommodations.
Maintenance is also limited. New content can be included automatically and I don’t have to constantly revisit older articles to check whether there’s still a regular link somewhere that I forgot to monetize.
Disadvantages and things I like less about Stay22
No affiliate solution is perfect. With Stay22, you give up some control when you use automated features such as Spark and Nova. That’s why I think it’s important to understand what the different features do and to regularly check how they’re working on your websites.
You also need to keep in mind that results can vary significantly. High traffic doesn’t automatically mean lots of bookings. Visitor intent is at least as important. A smaller website with lots of content that people read shortly before making a booking could potentially convert better than a much larger website dominated by more inspirational or early-stage planning content.
I like the API as an additional feature, but it’s considerably more technical for a beginner than the standard Stay22 tools. Fortunately, you don’t need to use the API at all to earn money with Stay22.
I also think it’s wise not to become completely dependent on a single source of affiliate income. That’s why I use other affiliate platforms and programs alongside Stay22, including Travelpayouts.
How does Stay22 pay publishers?
Stay22 doesn’t pay commission immediately after a booking. For accommodations, the stay first has to take place. According to Stay22, the commission becomes available for payout seven days after checkout.
Once you’ve reached the minimum payout threshold, you can request a payment. The exact threshold depends on your chosen payment method, but for several commonly used payment methods the minimum is $100. So, if a booking appears in your dashboard today, that doesn’t mean the commission will be in your bank account next week. Especially when accommodations are booked months in advance, there can be quite a long period between the booking itself and the eventual payout. In addition, Booking.com reservations can still be canceled until relatively close to the stay.
How to sign up for Stay22
Creating a Stay22 account is free. Once you’ve signed up, you add your website and can install the Stay22 Script. From there, you can decide which features you want to use. I would personally start with the basics: install the script and see how LinkSwap, Spark, and Nova perform on your website. You can always create your own affiliate links as well, while more advanced options such as the API can be added later if you need them. Want to try Stay22? You can create a free account through my personal referral link.
Stay22 referral bonus
Stay22 also has a referral program. When you sign up through an existing Stay22 partner’s referral link, you can earn an additional bonus as a new partner. At the moment, new Stay22 partners receive an extra $100 after reaching 100 confirmed bookings. This is in addition to the regular commission earned from those bookings. The person whose referral link you used receives a $500 referral bonus once you reach those 100 confirmed bookings.
You can then refer other people to Stay22 yourself. If you’ve had a good experience with the platform and other travel creators sign up through your own referral link, you can also earn $500 once each new partner reaches 100 confirmed bookings.
Stay22 has a separate referral program for Retail. If you’re specifically interested in using Stay22 to monetize retail content, you can sign up through my separate Stay22 Retail referral link.
Is Stay22 worth it for travel bloggers?
After 14 months of using Stay22, I can say that it has become one of the most interesting affiliate solutions for my travel websites. Not just because of the automation, but primarily because it actually generates bookings and revenue. Almost 400 bookings in 14 months and average revenue of more than $9 per 1,000 pageviews is a good result for my websites, especially considering that accommodations weren’t a major part of my affiliate strategy before I started using Stay22.
What I particularly like is that Stay22 works in two ways. On the one hand, I can deliberately recommend accommodations, create affiliate links, and add hotel blocks through the API. On the other, Nova and Spark work in the background and can generate revenue from articles I’m not actively optimizing myself.
I think Stay22 is particularly interesting if you already have a travel blog with a decent amount of existing content and organic traffic. Don’t expect every 1,000 pageviews to automatically generate $9: that’s my average across two travel websites over a 14-month period. Results will vary depending on the website, destination, and type of visitor.
But because installation is relatively straightforward and you don’t have to manually optimize every article, I think it’s an interesting affiliate solution to test. After 14 months, Stay22 is no longer a small experiment for me; it has become a regular part of how I monetize my travel websites.
