מלונזול · MalonZol

משווים את כל האתרים. משלמים הכי פחות. · malonzol.com

A Hebrew (RTL) hotel price-comparison site for Israeli travellers. It doesn't sell rooms. It shows live hotel prices from Agoda for the traveller's dates, and opens the same search on Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com and Trip.com in one click. Every outbound link carries your affiliate ID.

How it works

Piece	What it does
/	Hero search, destination "stories", live weekend deals (shown when Agoda is connected), destinations, FAQ
/search/	Live results: real hotels, prices in ₪, photos, ratings, discounts. Sort and filters (price, stars, score, deals, breakfast), "show more" deep search. Without live prices it falls back to ranked partner links.
/how-it-works/	Plain-language guide: why the same room costs different amounts on each site, how the comparison works, why it's free
/destinations/<slug>/	23 SEO landing pages with live hotels for the coming weekend, areas, tips, FAQ
/hotel/<slug>/<id>/	One SEO page per hotel from the imported catalog, with a live price check for any dates
/api/search, /api/rates	Server functions that call Agoda with the secret key

Stack: Astro with pre-rendered pages and two serverless API routes, deployed to Vercel.

1. Get the affiliate accounts

Partner	Where	What you get
Agoda (start here)	partners.agoda.com	Site ID + API key → live prices on the site. Commission tiers of roughly 4–7% of the booking value
Travelpayouts (easiest)	travelpayouts.com	One account for Booking.com, Agoda and more. Generate one link in the dashboard and copy marker, trs and p into PUBLIC_TP_* (see .env.example)
Booking.com	Travelpayouts (above), or the CJ affiliate network	Links only. Its price API is only for large contracted partners
Expedia / Hotels.com	Expedia Group affiliate program	IDs for links
Trip.com	Trip.com affiliate program	Allianceid + SID for links

Don't scrape Booking.com or any other partner. Their affiliate agreements forbid automated extraction, and breaking that gets the account closed and the commissions cancelled. Everything here uses official APIs and links.

2. Connect Agoda (live prices)

1. In the Agoda partner portal get your Site ID and API key.

2. Set AGODA_SITE_ID and AGODA_API_KEY (Vercel → Project → Settings → Environment Variables).

3. Download the Hotel Data File (Tools → Hotel Data file, CSV) and import it:

   npm run agoda:import -- ~/Downloads/agoda-hotels.csv --per-city 300
   

   This writes the Agoda city IDs for every destination (src/data/agoda-cities.json) and a hotel catalog (src/data/catalog/<slug>.json), which becomes one page per hotel. Commit both files and redeploy. No file yet? You can set city IDs directly with AGODA_CITY_IDS={"eilat":12345,...}.

Destinations without a city ID, and searches when Agoda is down or the quota is hit, automatically fall back to the partner links, so search never breaks.

3. Run and deploy

npm install
cp .env.example .env      # fill in what you have
npm run dev               # http://localhost:4321
AGODA_DEMO=1 npm run dev  # preview the results UI with clearly-labelled sample data, no keys needed
npm run build

Deploy: import the GitHub repo in Vercel (framework: Astro, no config needed), add the environment variables, and point malonzol.com (plus malonzol.co.il) at it. CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml) builds every pull request. Vercel's free Hobby plan is for non-commercial use only; an affiliate site needs the Pro plan (or another host).

Brand

• Name: מלונזול (MalonZol), literally "cheap hotel": what Israelis type into Google, understood instantly.
• Domains: on 2026-10-25 malonzol.com and malonzol.co.il showed no registration, and no existing business used the name. Register both; a descriptive name is easier to protect as a registered logo mark than as a word mark.
• Look: a deep-blue brand band (header and hero) with a sunny yellow search frame, white product UI and Assistant type (--brand, --sun, --fire-grad in src/styles/global.css). On phones, sections become swipeable rows, results are compact photo-on-the-side cards, and filters open as a bottom sheet. The logo is a price tag whose down arrow drops on hover, and searches show a "scanning the booking sites…" animation.
• Photos: Unsplash / Pexels CDNs (free commercial use), credited on /credits/; edit src/data/photos.ts.

SEO

• Hebrew lang="he" dir="rtl", unique titles and descriptions, canonical URLs, Open Graph image
• sitemap-index.xml + robots.txt; the search results page is noindex
• JSON-LD: Organization, WebSite + SearchAction, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage, TouristDestination, Hotel
• One page per destination and, after the import, one page per hotel: thousands of long-tail landing pages
• Affiliate links marked rel="sponsored"

Rankings still take months: submit the sitemap in Google Search Console, keep adding content, and earn links.

What the site claims

Live prices come from Agoda only. Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com and Trip.com are links that open the same destination and dates; the site never shows or ranks their prices. Prices are per night before taxes; there is no computed total. More than one room, or children without ages, falls back to the partner links with the reason shown.

Price mode

PUBLIC_PRICE_MODE decides what the deployment does with prices:

• links (default): no prices anywhere. Price routes never call a provider, whatever keys are set, and the copy, FAQ, meta tags and share image don't promise prices.
• live: price routes call the configured providers. Turn on only once a provider has approved the use.

Changing it needs a redeploy (page copy is built with it).

Limits and measurement

• /api/search redirects to one canonical query string, so junk params can't mint new CDN entries; identical searches in flight share one Agoda call; "show more" makes at most 6 calls. Prices are never cached. Before opening the site to the public, add a rate-limit rule for /api/* in Vercel's Firewall.
• Outbound clicks are sent to Vercel Web Analytics as outbound events (partner, place on page, link route). Pages are reported without their query string. Enable Web Analytics in the Vercel project. Clicks are not bookings: compare with the partners' reports.
• npm run check type-checks the project; CI runs it before the build.

Legal

The site says clearly that MalonZol is a comparison site, not a travel agency, that prices come from partners and aren't guaranteed, and that it may earn commission. The affiliate programs and Israeli consumer law require it. Don't use partner logos without permission.

Before launch, confirm with each program that this kind of site is allowed: Agoda's affiliate agreement treats comparison sites and the use of its content separately, and Travelpayouts brands approve traffic sources one by one. Hotel pages built from the Agoda catalog stay noindex until INDEX_HOTEL_PAGES=1.