Some of the links on this site earn us money. Here is exactly which ones, how much, and what it does — and does not — change about what we tell you.
Who pays us
Rockies Bound is a member of a small number of travel affiliate programmes. When you book something through one of our links or booking widgets, that partner pays us a commission on the booking — at no extra cost to you. Here’s who we currently work with:
TravelPayouts — the network behind several of the tour and activity widgets you’ll see across our guides. It bundles flights, hotels, tours, and more under one programme rather than making us set up a separate deal for every booking type, which is why you’ll see it in more than one place on the site. When a booking goes through a TravelPayouts-powered link, they pay us a commission and you pay exactly what you’d pay going direct. (If you happen to run a travel site yourself, joining through our link unlocks up to $100 in bonuses as you hit their earning milestones — it’s not an instant signup bonus, but worth a look.)
Stay22 — the tool behind the hotel and accommodation map on our where-to-stay guides. It reads the destinations we’ve written about and surfaces nearby places to stay automatically, so you can compare options without leaving the post. It took us about five minutes to set up and has quietly become one of the more useful tools we run on the back end. (Fellow bloggers who sign up through our link get a $100 bonus once they reach 100 bookings.)
Viator (part of Tripadvisor) — the programme behind our tour and experience links. When you book a tour through one of them, Viator pays us a commission on that booking.
We’ll add to this list if we join more programmes, and we’ll always name them here.
What it costs you
Nothing. You pay the same price you would pay going directly to the partner site — the commission comes out of their side, not yours. If you ever find a lower price elsewhere for the same booking, take it, and tell us so we can stop linking to the expensive one.
How we decide what to link to
The recommendation comes first and the link comes second, never the other way round. We link to a tour because it is genuinely the easiest way to see something worth seeing, usually because the alternative is a parking lot that fills at 4am or a shuttle that sold out in April. If the honest answer is that you should drive yourself, or skip it altogether, that is what the guide will say — and there will be no link.
Nobody pays us for a review, a placement, or a kind word, and we do not accept payment to feature a specific operator. Commission rates play no part in which tours we mention.
Where you will see these links
Any affiliate link or booking widget carries a visible note right next to it, before you click, so you always know what you are looking at. You should never have to come to this page to find that out.
Questions
If something here is unclear, or you think we have got a recommendation wrong, get in touch — we would rather hear it. Our privacy policy covers what our partners collect when you visit their sites.