Last updated 14 August 2026
Goose Valley Accommodation earns a commission from Booking.com, paid through Commission Junction, when you click one of our links and go on to complete a stay. It costs you nothing extra (you pay Booking.com's ordinary price), and it has no effect on which properties we list or how we order them.
That is the whole arrangement. The rest of this page just spells out the detail, because a disclosure you have to squint at is not a disclosure.
The nightly rate you see is Booking.com's rate. Booking through our link does not add a cent, and it does not remove any discount, deal or Genius benefit you would otherwise get.
It is paid out of their margin on a completed, non-cancelled stay. If you cancel, we earn nothing. If you book somewhere else entirely, we earn nothing.
No property owner can pay us to be listed, to be listed higher, or to be described more warmly. The commission rate is the same whichever property you book.
We are a publisher in the Booking.com affiliate partner programme, which Booking.com runs through the Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate) network. Booking.com is our only accommodation affiliate partner. We are not paid by, and have no commercial arrangement with, any individual property owner, letting agent, or Goose Valley Golf Estate itself.
We are an independent directory. We do not own, manage or let any of the properties on this site, and we take no payment from you at any point — see our about page for the full picture.
When you click a “check availability” button or a property link on this site, you are handed over to Booking.com with our partner identifier attached. Commission Junction records that the visit came from us. If you then complete a stay (not just a booking, but an actual stay that is not cancelled), Booking.com pays us a percentage of their commission on it, usually some weeks after checkout.
Everything past the click is Booking.com's: the price, the availability, the photographs, the guest reviews, the payment, the cancellation policy and the customer support. Your contract is with them and the property owner, never with us.
Assume every outbound link to Booking.com on this site is an affiliate link, because it is. In practice that means:
Links to other websites — a nature reserve, a restaurant, a local operator we happen to rate — are ordinary links and earn us nothing.
Our listings are drawn from the accommodation available on Booking.com in Plettenberg Bay and grouped by area: Goose Valley Golf Estate, Central Plett and the beachfront, Keurboomstrand, and Robberg Beach. Which properties appear, and in what order, is our own editorial judgement based on location, property type, capacity and guest ratings.
The affiliate relationship plays no part in that. Because the commission arrangement is identical across every Booking.com property, we have nothing to gain by steering you to one over another — which is exactly why we are comfortable telling you about it.
Star ratings, review scores and guest comments come from verified stays on Booking.com. We do not write them, edit them or filter out the bad ones.
The click hand-off works through cookies and identifiers set by Commission Junction and Booking.com on their side. We are not told who you are, what you booked or what you paid — we receive aggregate commission statements, not guest lists.
What we collect on our own site, and how you can control it, is set out in our privacy policy, written to comply with South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
Commission is what pays for this site: the hosting, the domain, the photography, the time spent keeping area guides and listings current. The alternative models are worse for you — charging property owners for placement would corrupt the rankings, and filling the pages with display advertising would make them unreadable.
A referral commission only works if you find something worth booking, which keeps our interests and yours pointing the same way.
If anything here is unclear, or you think a link is not properly disclosed, tell us — hello@goosevalleyaccommodation.co.za or via our contact page. This disclosure sits alongside our terms and conditions.
