Affiliate disclosure & editorial independence
Last updated: May 2026.
DealHarbor exists to help readers find genuinely good hotel deals. To pay for the work that goes into the site — the editorial team, the verification process, the email program, the hosting bill — we participate in a small number of affiliate programs. This page explains exactly how that works and how we keep it from influencing what we publish.
What an affiliate relationship is
When you click certain outbound links on DealHarbor and then complete a booking with the hotel brand, the brand may pay us a small commission. The commission comes out of the brand's marketing budget — it does not increase the price you pay for your reservation. You always pay the same rate at checkout whether or not you arrived via DealHarbor.
Our standing affiliate relationships
DealHarbor participates in affiliate programs operated by major hotel booking aggregators and a handful of individual hotel brands. We update the list quarterly. The presence or absence of an affiliate relationship does not affect whether a brand or a specific code appears on the site, the headline rating we give it, or where it ranks in our listings.
How we keep editorial independent
Three policies enforce the separation between editorial and commercial:
- No paid placements. No brand, advertiser, or affiliate can pay to appear on DealHarbor, pay to be removed, or pay to be ranked higher in our listings. Editorial decisions are made before the affiliate manager ever sees them.
- No commission-weighted ranking. The order in which deals appear on category and home pages is determined by editorial judgment (recency of verification, reader success rate, depth of discount). Commission rates are not an input into the ranking algorithm.
- Transparent removal. If we remove a code or de-rank a brand for editorial reasons (a failed verification, a pattern of reader complaints), we publish the reason on the affected page rather than silently editing it.
Advertising vs. affiliate
DealHarbor also displays advertising in the slots marked "Sponsored" throughout the site. Display advertising is served by third-party ad networks and is not curated by our editorial team. You should treat ads as advertising, not as an editorial endorsement of the advertised product.
Reader trust is the only asset
This site only works if you trust the codes we publish. Misleading you for a small commission is a fundamentally bad trade — we lose your trust forever in exchange for a one-time payout. The verification process, the editorial firewall, and this disclosure exist to make that trade-off explicit and to keep us honest.
Questions
If you ever wonder whether a specific recommendation on DealHarbor is influenced by an affiliate relationship, ask us. The contact form goes directly to the editor on duty, and we'll explain how the recommendation came to be on the site.