Affiliate marketing as a tool for communication and management of travel agencies in the virtual market: a Spanish case study.

The Internet appearance and the application of Information and Communication Technologies (hereinafter referred to as ICTs) have contributed a meaningful transformations in the commercial communication as much in strategic idea as in the techniques that it implements. It brings to the companies to test a deep process of adaptation in the new tendency and surging tools. In this context, the tourist companies and the travel agencies couldn’t remove the effects of the paradigm change in the way of advertising and selling their products. This paper deals with, from an analytical point of view, the connection existing between Spanish travel agencies, figured out as tourist mediation companies, and a specific advertise online tool: Affiliate Marketing. It includes a study of this tool from a holistic perspective and its potential in times of crisis. The methodology used, due to the own characteristic of the problem test and the investigation job, was to realize the search and the test of the important information through the basic source, based it on in a qualitative investigation.