Affiliate Disclosure

The short version

Some of the links on The Travel Tinker are affiliate links. That means if you click one and end up booking or buying something, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. The price you pay is exactly the same whether you use our link or go directly to the provider’s website.

We use that money to keep this site running, fund our travel (so we can keep writing about it), and avoid plastering the site with intrusive banner ads. It’s basically the reason this site can exist without a paywall or a popup every 30 seconds asking you to subscribe to something.

What this actually means in practice

When we recommend a hotel, a tour, a rental car, or a travel insurance policy, we link to booking platforms where you can compare options and book. If you book through that link, the platform pays us a referral fee. You don’t pay a penny more. The commission comes from the company’s marketing budget, not your wallet.

We only recommend things we’d genuinely use ourselves or have actually used. If something is rubbish, we won’t link to it just because it pays well. There’s no point sending you to a terrible hostel booking platform for a £0.40 commission. That’s a bad trade for everyone.

Our affiliate partners

Here’s the full list of companies we have affiliate relationships with. If you click a link on this site and end up on one of these platforms, there’s a good chance it’s an affiliate link:

• Booking.com — Hotels, hostels, apartments, and guesthouses worldwide
• Trip.com — Flights, hotels, and transport bookings
• GetYourGuide — Tours, activities, day trips, and experiences
• DiscoverCars — Car rental comparison across 500+ providers
• BusBud — Intercity bus routes and coach tickets
• Trainline — Train tickets across Europe and beyond
• Welcome Pickups — Pre-booked airport transfers and private drivers
• EKTA — Travel insurance for European travellers
• VisitorsCoverage — Travel insurance comparison for international trips
• Airalo — eSIM data plans for staying connected abroad

This list gets updated when we add or drop partners. We don’t work with every affiliate program out there. If a company’s product isn’t something we’d use or recommend, we don’t sign up regardless of what they’re paying.

Does this affect what we write?

No. And honestly, this is the most important bit.

Our editorial decisions (what we recommend, what we warn you about, what we skip entirely) are completely independent from our affiliate relationships. We’ve written plenty of articles recommending free alternatives over paid options, told people to book direct when it’s cheaper, and flagged when a popular service isn’t worth the money. The affiliate income is a byproduct of being useful, not the other way around.

We’ll never write a glowing review of something just because it pays commission. If we did, you’d stop trusting our recommendations, and then nobody clicks anything, and we’re out of business anyway. So it’s pretty self-regulating.

How to spot an affiliate link

On most articles and guides across the site, you’ll see a short disclosure note near the top of the page (usually right after the first paragraph) that says something like:

“This article may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.”

That note means the page contains at least one affiliate link. The links themselves look like normal links. We don’t disguise them or hide them in buttons without context. If we’re linking to a booking platform, you’ll know what it is before you click.

What about sponsored content?

As of right now, we don’t publish sponsored posts or accept payment from companies to write about their products. Everything on this site is stuff we’ve chosen to cover because we think it’s genuinely useful. If that ever changes, we’ll label sponsored content clearly and separately from our regular editorial.

Got questions?

If anything about our affiliate relationships isn’t clear, or you want to know whether a specific link is an affiliate link, just ask. You can reach us through the contact page and we’ll give you a straight answer.

Last updated: 02/04/2026