Affiliate Disclosure

This affiliate disclosure explains how Cape Town Travel Guide is paid for, which commercial relationships we hold, and how we keep those relationships from shaping what we tell you. It is written in plain language rather than legal boilerplate, because a disclosure that nobody reads is not really a disclosure at all.

On this page

How this site makes money

Cape Town Travel Guide is free to read and carries no subscription. It is funded, or intended to be funded, primarily through affiliate commission. This page explains exactly what that means, because you are entitled to know what our commercial interest is when you read a recommendation.

An affiliate link is a link to a third party — typically an accommodation booking platform or an activity provider — that identifies us as the referrer. If you follow it and make a booking, we may receive a commission from that company. It costs you nothing extra: the price you pay is the same as it would be had you gone directly.

Which affiliate programmes we use

Cape Town Travel Guide participates in affiliate programmes. Our affiliate relationships are managed through CJ Affiliate (Commission Junction), and links to Booking.com on this site may be affiliate links.

We also participate in the Viator Partner Program. Links to tours, activities and experiences on Viator may be affiliate links. Viator is the merchant of record for those bookings, and the experiences themselves are operated by independent third-party suppliers rather than by us.

If you follow one of those links and complete a qualifying booking, we may earn a commission from the advertiser. This does not increase the price you pay. The rate is the same as it would be had you gone to the provider directly.

If you follow a Viator link and complete a qualifying booking, we may earn a commission. This does not increase the price you pay, and it does not change what the supplier charges.

Which destinations we cover, which places and experiences we describe, and what we say about them are decided editorially and are not determined by affiliate commission. We may add other affiliate programmes over time; when we do, this page will name them.

We also work with Stay22. Stay22 supplies the live accommodation maps that appear on some of our accommodation and “where to stay” pages, and it also handles our links to GetYourGuide for tours, activities and experiences. A Stay22 component or link routes you on to an independent booking service — for accommodation that is usually Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com or Vrbo, and for activities it is GetYourGuide. Those companies, not Cape Town Travel Guide, are the merchant for the booking, and the accommodation or experience itself is run by an independent third party.

If you book through a Stay22 map or a Stay22 link, we may earn a commission on a qualifying booking. It does not increase the price you pay, and we do not set, receive or control the prices, ratings or availability those components display — that information comes live from the booking service and is not stored or edited by us.

Our commercial arrangements are split by the kind of trip: accommodation and day tours and activities run through Stay22, either to the accommodation providers above or to GetYourGuide; Booking.com links placed directly through CJ Affiliate remain live on a number of pages; and the Viator Partner Program remains in use for the tour links currently published on our four Cape tour guides, and is the programme we intend to use for multi-day guided and self-drive touring products in future. Where any of these appears on a page, an affiliate disclosure appears with it.

What this does not affect

This is the part that matters:

  • What we cover. Destinations, attractions and regions are chosen on merit and reader usefulness, not on whether they can be monetised. A large amount of what we write about — national parks, public beaches, hiking trails, museums, free viewpoints — earns us nothing at all.
  • What we say. We do not improve an assessment because a provider pays commission, and we do not withhold a criticism. If a place is overrated, crowded, poor value or not worth the drive, we say so.
  • Ranking and ordering. Nothing is listed higher, featured or recommended because of a commercial relationship.
  • Safety and factual content. Never influenced by commercial considerations, in any circumstance.

What we do not accept

  • Payment for editorial coverage, placement or favourable treatment
  • Sponsored posts, advertorial or paid guest posts
  • Paid link insertions
  • Free stays, meals, tours or hospitality in exchange for coverage
  • Any arrangement conditional on what we write

Where you will see an affiliate disclosure

Where a page contains affiliate links we disclose it on that page, near the relevant content. This page is the site-wide statement.

Our current position

The site is at an early stage and the commercial layer is being built deliberately slowly, after the editorial layer rather than before it. Most pages currently carry no affiliate links at all.

Where they do appear, they take two forms: accommodation links to Booking.com through CJ Affiliate, on destination guides and where-to-stay articles; and experience links to Viator, on our tours pages. Both carry a disclosure on the page itself as well as here.

Prices and availability

We do not control third-party pricing, availability or terms, and we cannot guarantee them. Any price we mention is indicative and dated; always confirm on the provider’s own site before booking. We are not the merchant, we do not take payment, and we cannot resolve a booking dispute on your behalf — that is between you and the provider.

Why this affiliate disclosure exists

Advertising regulators in most of our readers’ home markets require publishers to make commercial relationships obvious rather than buried. In the United States that expectation is set out in the Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides; in the United Kingdom the Advertising Standards Authority applies similar rules on recognisability of advertising. We follow the stricter reading of both, and we would publish this affiliate disclosure even if nobody required it.

Every substantive affiliate placement on Cape Town Travel Guide sits inside a bordered box that names the company you are being sent to, carries a short line confirming that it is an affiliate link, and points back to this page. Those links also carry the technical markers search engines use to identify paid or incentivised links, so the relationship is declared to machines as well as to readers.

Our affiliate disclosure applies to those boxes specifically. If a link is not in one of those boxes, assume it is an ordinary editorial link with no commercial relationship behind it. Links to official park authorities, municipal sites, weather services and tourism boards are never affiliate links.

What happens when you use one

Following an affiliate link takes you through the affiliate network that manages the relationship, which records that the visit came from us and then passes you on to the advertiser’s own site. We do not see your name, your payment details, or what you eventually book. What we see, weeks later, is an aggregate report: how many bookings were attributed to a page, and what commission resulted.

Whatever the advertiser’s own privacy policy and cookie settings say applies from the moment you arrive on their site. Ours stops at our boundary — see our privacy policy for what we collect here.

Questions

If anything about our commercial arrangements is unclear, ask us. Our broader editorial commitments are set out in the editorial policy.

Scroll to Top