Editorial policy
What we will write, what we refuse to write, how selection notes are produced and how corrections are handled.
This page exists so you can hold us to something specific.
1. We do not fake experience
Nobody writing for this site has stayed in the hotels it lists. So you will never read “as you approach the hotel”, “the staff greeted us warmly” or “we woke to the sound of” on these pages. Every statement about a property traces back to a data field or a verifiable fact.
2. How selection notes are produced
The Why it made the list note on each card is generated from that property's own data: its guest score, review volume, rank within the reviewed set for that page, property type, independence, star class, amenities and price position. The wording varies with the data, not at random.
They are factual statements, not editorial essays, and we would rather say that plainly than dress them up as hand-written prose. Where a page needs genuine editorial judgement - what a destination is like, what a trade-off means - a person writes it.
3. We show the trade-off
Every card carries a Know before you book line where the data supports one: no restaurant on site, no published star rating, pet fees to confirm, pool type unknown. A recommendation that never mentions a downside is an advertisement.
4. We publish the criteria before the list
Every collection page states what qualifies for it before showing a single hotel. If a page cannot state a rule, it does not get published as a commercial page.
5. We mark what we cannot verify
Several searches people genuinely make - indoor pools, in-room hot tubs, historic buildings, unique
properties - depend on fields our source data does not carry. Those pages carry a visible notice, a
noindex tag and no place in our sitemap. They will be indexed when, and only when, the data
supports the claim in the title.
6. Commercial separation
Affiliate commission does not vary by property in a way that could bias a ranking, and no property can pay for inclusion, position or a higher Charming Score. If we ever accept sponsored placement it will be labelled as such, kept out of editorial rankings, and it still will not touch the score.
7. Corrections
See something that needs updating? Email [email protected]. Factual errors are corrected as soon as we can confirm the correct value. Data-level errors - a wrong amenity flag, a closed property - are also worth telling us about, because they affect more than one page.
8. Freshness
Every page states the export date its figures come from. Guest scores, review counts and rates change continuously; treat the numbers on this site as a snapshot for shortlisting, and the property's own page as the current truth at the moment you book.