The 30% headline: what it's actually 30% of

A partner who refers one client onto a Bombardier Global 7500 for a London to Geneva sector can clear more from that single commission cheque than most referral schemes pay across a full quarter of smaller bookings. That is the number new affiliates fixate on, and rightly so, but the figure only means something once you know what it is 30% of.

The villiers affiliate commission structure pays out on the charter price, the fare the client is quoted for the aircraft itself, not on the total invoice. A quote for a Phenom 300E on a London Luton (EGGW) to Nice (LFMN) sector might come to £42,000 once landing fees, de-icing, catering and a positioning leg from a second airport are added. If the base charter price within that quote is £36,000, the affiliate's 30% is calculated against the £36,000, giving a commission of £10,800.

That distinction matters because ancillary costs vary enormously by route and season. Landing and handling fees at LFMN in August peak season run higher than the same fees at a quieter regional field, and de-icing charges in winter at somewhere like Zurich (LSZH) can add several thousand pounds to a quote that has nothing to do with the aircraft charter itself. None of that inflates or deflates the commission, because the 30% only ever touches the charter line.

VAT is excluded from the calculation entirely. Where a booking is subject to UK or EU VAT on the charter element, the affiliate's percentage is applied to the net charter price before tax, so partners are not commissioned on money that goes straight to HMRC or an equivalent authority. This keeps the villiers affiliate commission structure consistent whether the client is a UK resident booking a domestic hop or an EU-based traveller on a cross-border sector where VAT treatment differs.

Repositioning and empty-leg elements are treated separately. If a quote includes a repositioning flight to bring the aircraft to the departure airport, that leg's cost sits outside the commissionable charter price. Affiliates are not penalised for it, but they are also not paid on it, because it is not client-facing value, it is operational cost the operator absorbs into the total quote.

Attribution: how a click becomes a tracked booking

Every affiliate is issued a unique referral link tied to a partner ID, and that link is what starts the chain from click to commission. When a prospective client follows the link, a tracking cookie is set in their browser before they land on the Villiers enquiry form, and that cookie carries the partner ID through to the quote request regardless of how many pages the visitor browses first.

The enquiry itself is tagged at the point of submission, not at the point of booking. This matters because a client might browse aircraft options, read about the Dassault Falcon 8X's 6,450 nautical mile range, then submit an enquiry two days later after comparing it against a Gulfstream G650ER. As long as the cookie is still active when the enquiry form is submitted, the referral is attributed to the affiliate who sent that original click.

Attribution is confirmed manually by the partnerships desk once an enquiry converts into a firm booking, not automatically at enquiry stage. This step exists because enquiries do not all become bookings; a client might request three quotes for a Citation Longitude and only fly with one of them, or an enquiry might be for a route Villiers cannot service on the requested date. Commission is only ever generated against a confirmed, flown charter, so the tracked click is a candidate for commission rather than a guarantee of it.

Where two affiliates' links touch the same client, the system does not split commission. The referral is credited to whichever cookie was active and unexpired at the moment the enquiry form was submitted, which in practice usually means the most recent qualifying click, a point that becomes more relevant once you factor in how long that cookie actually lasts.

The cookie window and what happens with multi-touch journeys

Forty-five days is the window a tracking cookie stays live once a prospective client first clicks an affiliate's link. A client who clicks an affiliate's link on day one and submits an enquiry on day 40 still generates a commissionable referral; a client who clicks on day one and does not enquire until day 50 does not, because the cookie has already expired and the enquiry is treated as unattributed direct traffic.

Charter decisions rarely happen on the first visit. A client comparing a Phenom 300E against a Citation Longitude for a family trip to Faro (LPFR) might click an affiliate's article, research for a fortnight, discuss budget with a partner, and only submit the enquiry in week three. Inside a 45-day window, all of that deliberation still resolves to the original affiliate, which is why the window is set considerably longer than a typical retail purchase cycle.

Multi-touch journeys, where a client interacts with more than one affiliate's content before booking, are resolved on a last-qualifying-click basis. If a client clicks Affiliate A's link on day 5, then clicks Affiliate B's link on day 20 and enquires on day 25, Affiliate B's cookie overwrites Affiliate A's and the commission goes to Affiliate B. This is a deliberate simplification: Villiers does not run a multi-touch attribution model that splits commission proportionally across every referrer a client encountered, because the operational overhead of adjudicating partial credit on every booking would slow down payouts for every partner, not just the ones in a shared journey.

Direct return visits break the chain regardless of the 45-day window. If a client clicks an affiliate's link, closes the browser, and later types villiers.ai directly into their address bar to submit an enquiry, that visit is not cookie-tracked and the referral is lost even if it happens within the 45 days. Partners who want to protect attribution on longer sales cycles should encourage clients to bookmark or reuse the original tracked link rather than searching for Villiers separately later.

From confirmed charter to commission: the approval and payout timeline

A tracked enquiry becomes commissionable only once the charter has actually flown, not once the client signs a contract. Villiers holds commission in a pending state through the booking-to-departure period because cancellations, date changes and occasional weather diversions can still alter or void a charter after contracts are signed but before wheels are up.

Once the flight is completed, the booking moves into an approval queue and the partnerships team confirms the final charter price against which the 30% is calculated. This step typically takes up to 14 days after the flight date, allowing time for the operator invoice to reconcile against the client quote, since the two can differ slightly if a schedule change altered the routing or aircraft type between booking and departure.

Approved commissions are then paid on a monthly cycle rather than individually as each flight lands. Everything approved within a calendar month is aggregated and paid out by the 15th of the following month, so a charter that flies and is approved in March is paid by 15 April. A partner with several bookings completing across different weeks of the same month receives one consolidated payment rather than a separate transfer for each.

There is a minimum payout threshold of £50. Commissions below that figure roll forward and accumulate into the following month's payment run rather than being paid out individually, which mostly affects affiliates referring smaller light-jet charters, such as a short Citation Longitude hop where the charter price and resulting 30% commission are modest compared with a long-range Global 7500 or G650ER booking.

Payments are made by bank transfer to the account details each affiliate registers at sign-up, and a statement itemising each commissionable booking, the charter price it was calculated against, and the resulting 30% figure accompanies every payment. Partners can query any line on that statement directly with the partnerships desk before the next payment cycle closes if a figure looks wrong.

Common questions new partners ask in their first month

A cancelled booking after the cookie has attributed the enquiry but before the charter flies generates no commission at all. This catches out most partners at least once, because the villiers affiliate commission structure only pays against completed, flown charters, and a cancelled booking never reaches that state regardless of how far through the contract process it got.

The second most common question is whether a referred client's second and third bookings also generate commission. They do not, under the standard programme; the 30% applies to the first charter that results from a tracked referral, and any repeat bookings the same client makes independently afterwards fall outside that original attribution unless the client comes back through the same affiliate's link and generates a fresh, separately tracked enquiry.

Partners also ask about empty-leg bookings, where a client books a one-way repositioning flight at a reduced rate rather than a full round-trip charter. Commission still applies at 30%, calculated against whatever the discounted charter price actually is, so an empty-leg fare of £8,000 on a Phenom 300E generates £2,400 rather than being excluded from the programme entirely.

Finally, affiliates ask what counts as proof that a click came from them if a client calls Villiers directly instead of submitting the online enquiry form. In that scenario, the client needs to reference the affiliate's name or referral code when they call, because a phone enquiry with no cookie and no stated referral source cannot be attributed retrospectively, however certain the affiliate is that the lead originated with them.