UPDATE: VivaStay has
posted a further comment and public apology on the A4U forum. The company has rectified the pricing issue but stresses that it was never advised against such a procedure.
Quite a furore in the travel affiliate marketing sector this week when a travel firm was exposed for charging different prices to consumers depending on how they arrived on the site.
Although the apparent scandal may well have been a non-starter as an issue for any consumers involved, as they may not have realised, affiliates have turned on UK-based European accommodation site
VivaStay with venom.
The problem began when an affiliate noticed that prices for hotel stays on VivaStay (the consumer-facing site of Essex, UK-based Viva Travel) were cheaper when a user went direct to the site rather than when arriving via an affiliate link.
A post on the popular and influential Affiliates4u forum triggered a major uprising against the company as other affiliates slammed it for what is an extremely frowned-on practice - making up the shortfall required to pay an affiliate by bumping up the price.
Chief executive of CheapBeach, Lawrence Target, who found the original error and triggered the furore, says:
"This was only detected as I was testing merchant links for a new travel site CheapBeach.co.uk, it is a great domain, designed to drive traffic and volume customers to my partners, only to discover that one of those partners would be penalising my customers for doing so."
Chief executive of
CheapBeach, Lawrence Target, who triggered the furore, says:
"For Vivastay to sneek in the implementation of this added hidden charge to the customer from an affiliate link is outrageous.
"This was only detected as I was testing merchant links for a new travel site CheapBeach.co.uk, it is a great domain, designed to drive traffic and volume customers to my partners, only to discover that one of those partners would be penalising my customers for doing so.
"Thankfully not all merchants and travel providers are quite so underhanded.
"It is an afront to the very fabric of Affiliate Marketing and I suspect that other affiliates will also be dropping them like a stone, how can you work with a merchant you just can't trust, it only works if both parties are in synergy, a proper partnership, that is what achieves the best returns."
Affiliate Window, the London-based affiliate company that has VivaStay on its network, says the VivaStay programme was "self-managed" and therefore wasn't picked up by its own people.
Nevertheless, affiliates claim the practice damages their reputation as consumers will become wary of clicking on their links as it may result in a higher price on the end-site.
VivaStay's Danny Gallo says the company is new to affiliate marketing and was never told such a model would be treated with such ire by affiliate partners ("no malicious intent").
"This was truly an oversight on our behalf as to how damaging or against affiliate ethics this is and we feel we have learned from this chapter and are taking all the necessary steps to rectify this as a matter of priority."
This excuse has been met with extreme scepticism by many.
The company will spend the next few days reworking the system behind the scenes to rectify what it claims is now a "completely innocent error" on its part, Gallo says.
The saga, however, highlights a number of issues in the affiliate marketing arena.
Firstly is the power the affiliate marketing community wields through well-used forums - a search for VivaStay on Google already yields a "Rip-Off"-type entry.
Another key point is what appears to be the lack of understanding about why some practices (such as different pricing) are not allowed, including the role of networks to inform (or not) clients about it.