Over the years, I’ve written posts writing about upcoming or sudden unannounced devaluations of some of our favorite miles and points currencies. One of the common comments that often pops up is that “you shouldn’t have publicized that so widely” or “you bloggers killed this deal”. So the thing that I was really thinking about was: do travel bloggers really kill deals? Last week, I wrote about Hilton’s sudden devaluation.
Also Read: Emirates devalues in an unique way
Are travel bloggers responsible for triggering devaluations?
So what’s a devaluation? From a first principle perspective, a devaluation is when an airline or a hotel chain significantly increases the value for redemptions or makes it tougher to earn their currency at the same clip as before. Loyalty programs have evolved over the years and now a devaluation is often in the form of a new modified award chart with more categories.
So does the fact that travel bloggers hype a lot of the deals really mean that they’re also in some way guilty of being responsible for these devaluations? Let’s have a look.
The hype cycle
Before we draw conclusions, we need to look at what I call the hype cycle. This will give us a fair idea of how deals are found and often die.
Finding a Deal
A travel blogger finds a deal. This is the first stage of a hype cycle. Very often, it’s thanks to an eagle eyed reader or a blogger who was researching something and found something by accident.
Publicizing the Deal
During this stage, the deal gets a lot of attention. Given how great the deal is, more and more bloggers start writing about how they booked something. This is then followed by a bunch of reviews talking about their experience.
The Gold Rush
So, after the early adopters have done their bit, this is where the deal goes mainstream and starts getting noticed in more mainstream ‘travel media’ sources. This is when the general public becomes more aware and people start joining in en masse.
The Death Knell
This period is when the people running loyalty progams start paying attention to what’s going on. Brands have very sophisticated technology to track activity and this is when the loyalty program sees a sudden spike in a certain type of redemption. At this stage, the deal is often suddenly pulled or modified in some way or the other that renders is a lot less lucrative than it initially was.
The Pundit’s Mantra
Loyalty programs purely exist to make money and keep their members active and engaged. When a loyalty program realizes that they’re losing money, they immediately make modifications. So then, how culpable are travel bloggers for these devaluations?
Firstly, travel bloggers are in the business of writing about and publicizing travel deals. If they don’t, people won’t really bother reading them. Secondly, when a blogger publicizes a deal, he or she doesn’t always know how popular a particular deal will get. Thirdly, bloggers don’t know if someone will go overboard with a particular deal, thereby resulting its sudden demise.
So, in closing, I’d say that travel bloggers are in the business of writing about and publicizing deals. The next time you’re sitting on the fence about a deal, think about the hype cycle. A deal can die at any point in the hype cycle, based on how the business running it sees from a cost benefit perspective. So don’t shoot the messenger. The next time a great deal shows up, go for it, because you never know when it may die or when an unannounced devaluation may happen.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss out on the deals, news and travel industry trends. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram and Twitter to keep getting the latest content!
So the answer is “True”, lol.
Publishing a deal is solely for the purpose of generating clicks and therefore revenue so of course bloggers kill deals. The abnormal spike on purchases of a particular deal on a given route is the giant red flag to the ticketing algorithm.
One can easily flip the argument and say that if it weren’t for bloggers writing about deals, would people know about them easily? It works both ways.
You have an interesting though rather skewed perspective. Points and miles bloggers don’t seem to have any issue with shilling for XYZ credit card if it pays a nice referral fee. As long (rarely IRL) as the offer is the best around then I have zero issue with the blogger getting paid in this manner.
Publicizing a deal that will cause the deal to be quickly discontinued is another story. When a blogger does that then they’re actively participating in killing a deal. I’m agnostic about whether bloggers should actually write about such things but it really does seem that “It’s my fault for spilling this deal” is something no points blogger ever said. A little integrity and self-awareness would help in the process as a whole.
We’ll, to your first point, if a blogger is disclosing his/her sources of income then I don’t have an issue about how they’re getting paid. I was also a reader for many years before becoming a blogger so I’ve seen the space from both sides of the curtain.
I can’t speak for others but in my case, I don’t have any affiliate links and also advertise/write about offers that don’t pay me anything. Sometimes a lot of these offers are just publicly available. Also, talking about bloggers participating in killing deals – that depends on a myriad factors like 1. How popular the deal gets once it’s written about 2. How much of a hit./spike the business running the deal sees to immediately water it down/or shut it down.
So, to answer your question, I partially agree with your assessment. But travel bloggers are in the business of writing about travel so they will want to popularize travel deals, if some people go overboard in chasing a deal then it might get killed. A few examples come to mind – manufactured spend was a craze about a 10 years back … it has died down now… I never bothered chasing it… there were others who chased it and got shut down.