Affiliate disclosure: which links earn the guide money

cartagena.info is published and edited by Rainer Lang. It is an independent guide to Cartagena, Colombia, not the website of the city, the tourism board, the port or any tour operator or hotel. The address is on the About page.

The guide’s only income is the commission that three booking programs pay: GetYourGuide, Viator and Booking.com. No business pays to be covered, and the guide carries no ads today. If ads are added, this page will say so from that day.

A partner link is a link whose address begins with cartagena.info/go/. It sits on the name of a tour, a boat, a ticket or a hotel. When you click it, this site answers with a redirect to that product on the partner’s site and adds two things to the address: the guide’s account id with the partner, and a tag that names the page you clicked on. That is how the partner knows a booking came through the guide. Every page that carries partner links says so in a line near the top.

The partners today:

GetYourGuide

Tours, boats, tickets and classes.

Viator

Tours, boats, tickets and classes.

Booking.com

Hotels and other places to stay. These links pass through Stay22, a travel affiliate network: the guide’s account is with Stay22, which works with Booking.com.

In the address of a hotel link you will see aid=pikespeak. That is the publisher’s account with Stay22. It is named after another travel site of his and is used for this guide too. The tag that follows it names this guide and the page.

Further booking partners may be added; Civitatis is one that may be. This page will name each one from the day its links appear.

In the page code every partner link is marked rel="sponsored", the label search engines ask for on paid links.

Some pages also link straight to a GetYourGuide, Viator or Booking.com page, for example in the source list, to show where a fact comes from. Those links do not go through /go/ and earn the guide nothing.

When you book after following a partner link, the partner may pay the guide a share of what it earns from the booking. The commission comes out of the partner’s side. The price is the partner’s price; the guide adds no fee to it, and if you do not book, nothing is paid.

The partner keeps track of the booking on its own site, under its own terms and privacy policy. What this site records when you click, and what the partner receives, is on the privacy page.

• Bookable productsThe tours, boats, tickets and rooms a page links for booking come from the booking sites the guide works with: GetYourGuide, Viator and Booking.com. A product those sites do not sell is named without a booking link, or not named.
• CoverageNo business pays to be covered, to be named or to be placed higher. Official sites, free sights and public places are covered and linked without any commission.
• AdsThe guide carries no ads and no sponsored articles today.
• Choosing a fewWhere a page picks a few hotels or tours from a booking site, it says how it picked them.
• Prices, ratingsWhere the guide prints what a tour costs, it is the lowest price the partner listed on the day named beside it; prices change, and the partner sets them. The guide prints no ratings and no review counts. The fees on its pages are official ones, set by the body named beside them.
• Official sitesLinks to operators, authorities and other official sites are ordinary links. The guide earns nothing from them.
• Single businessesThe guide works with booking platforms only. It has no arrangement with any single hotel, tour company or restaurant.

You never have to use a partner link. Every page reads the same whether you click one or not.

• Spot it firstPoint at a link or press and hold it: a partner link shows an address that begins with cartagena.info/go/.
• Go there yourselfOpen the partner’s site or the operator’s own site in a new tab and search for the name of the tour or hotel. A booking made that way pays the guide nothing.
• Use the official linkWhere a place has an official site, the page links it as an ordinary link.

Questions about a link or a partner: write by email at [email protected] or through the contact form.