Merchant buys Affiliate?

There’s a really interesting piece on Travel Rants which seems to show that TUI (the company who own Thomson Holidays) have acquired holiday review site Holidays Uncovered. It’s interesting to see that what is basically an affiliate site full of user generated content has been doing so well that it makes better business sense to buy them out instead of paying commissions.

As the Travel Rant blog mentions it does raise a few interesting questions - firstly how impartial can the site be now and will it continue to succeed? Once all the competitor links are removed is it really a resource or is it just an advertising tool?

And the second big question is…. who’s next?