An interview with… Vakantie-met-kinderen.com
This month we had a chat with Sabine from Vakantie-met-kinderen.nl, one of our big publishers in the travel category.
Could you please tell us more about yourself, your background and your role within the organisation?
Hi, my name is Sabine Kuipers – van der Meer. I’m the youngest of 15 children and married to Patrick van der Meer. We have two kids, Zeb and Tycho. Before the kids came, Patrick and I travelled a lot. We have made a blog of our world tour in 2002 and we wrote about our experiences for the home front. That was our first introduction with writing stories and giving our family information about travel.
After the kids were born, we wanted to go on a holiday again and also make a bigger trip. While searching the internet, we found out there wasn’t that much information about holidays with children. We saw this as a great opportunity to create a website by ourselves. And that is what we have done. I started with filling up the content and Patrick with the necessary technical work behind the scenes.
The website has grown in ten years to one of the most biggest websites for family holidays. And I am very proud of that!
Why should affiliate programs work with you?
We only work together with parties that offer nice holidays for families. Holiday parks, sightseeing trips, theme parks, and so on. By keeping the quality high, the programs get the attention they deserve. On the website we have highlighted why the programs are so much fun in order to make the recommendations from the heart. Our audience appreciates that, and that can be seen in the results.
What does the online market look like in the Netherlands?
The online market keeps getting more important, with a lot of different kind of publishers. Content sites, review sites and discount code sites, to name a few. New influencers are active via Social Media. They try to earn their keep through ad networks, direct ads and affiliate marketing. It is the serious content sites that are the most important for advertisers. They bring the best products to the attention of their target audiences and will be rewarded based on no cure no pay by affiliate marketing.
There are a few Affiliate Networks active in the Netherlands. These have an important role, not by using the technique of Affiliate Marketing, but also to mediate between advertisers and publishers. They are indispensable for serious publishers to be able to serve a large number of advertisers. And vice versa, advertisers (also small ones) can easily recruit different Affiliate partners.
What trends do you see in the market currently? And how can Vakantie-met-kinderen help with this?
Advertising on Google and Facebook becomes more expensive, and ads will be shown less and less on Facebook. Vakantie-met-kinderen can reach a targeted audience in which the advertising costs are affordable. In addition, Affiliate marketing rewards for performance only.
Within Affiliate Marketing, we see a continuous adaption of the techniques. Tacking with cookies is increasingly replaced with fingerprint tracking for example. And the attribution models are more advanced, allowing different channels to be rewarded for their contribution in a transaction.
How do you differentiate from the competitors?
Personal approach is what sets us apart from our competitors. I try to pick out the nicest holidays in the huge travel offer and I post them on our website on the information page about countries and regions. I describe why it’s a child-friendly accommodation. This is how I try to make it easier for my visitors to find a holiday.
Where do you still see challenges?
I can’t always asses a destination easily. I prefer to take a look with my family. But that’s not always possible. So I’m still searching for ways to assess the products objectively.
What else is on the schedule?
We are busy trying to describe all the regions of the most important holiday destinations, in addition to the descriptions of all the different countries. After France and Germany, it’s time for Denmark (recently completed) and Italy.
