How we select hotels

Every hotel on this site went through the same two-step process, and none of it is secret. Data narrows the field. Character decides what survives.

1. The source

We work from a Booking.com property export covering the United States - 272,776 properties as of August 2026. For each one it carries the guest score, the number of reviews, property type, star classification, a set of amenity flags, an indicative nightly rate, coordinates and photography.

It is a good dataset and it has real limits. It does not carry construction year, architect, heritage listing, whether a pool is indoors, or whether a hot tub is in the room. Where a page depends on a field we do not have, we say so on the page and keep it out of our search index rather than guess.

2. The numeric filter

From the full export we keep only properties that meet all three conditions:

• Property type is hotel, inn, resort, lodge or bed & breakfast. Holiday homes, apartments, hostels and campsites are excluded - not because they are bad, but because this is a hotel guide.
• Guest score of 8.5 or higher out of 10.
• At least 100 guest reviews, so the score means something.

That takes 272,776 properties down to 9,184. Roughly 97 out of every 100 US properties in the export never reach a page on this site.

3. The style and amenity criteria

Each collection has a written rule, printed on the page itself. Nothing is inferred from a property name or from marketing copy.

4. Independents are listed first

Two thirds of the properties that clear our numeric filter belong to a chain brand or a chain soft brand. Ranked purely on score, a shortlist for almost any city fills up with them.

So we apply one explicit ordering rule on top of the Charming Score: independently operated properties are listed first, and chain-managed properties appear once the independents in that selection run out. Within each of those two groups, the order is Charming Score, highest first.

This is a curation decision, not a data one, and it is the reason our city lists look different from a booking site's. A chain hotel can be an excellent stay - it just does not get to crowd out the properties you came here to find.

5. Geography is measured, not described

City shortlists are built from coordinates, not from the city name in an address - address fields are inconsistent and neighborhoods are often recorded as cities. We fix a centre point for each destination and include every qualifying property within a published radius of it. The radius is printed on every destination page.

The same method makes our historic district and beachfront pages possible. A property is inside the Savannah Historic District, or within half a mile of Waikiki Beach, because its own coordinates say so.

6. When we do not publish

A commercial page stays out of our search index when any of these is true:

• fewer than five qualifying properties, so there is no real shortlist to make;
• the defining characteristic of the page cannot be verified in our data;
• the selection would be nearly identical to another page.

Those pages still exist and still show real properties - people search for them and deserve an honest answer - but they carry a noindex tag and are excluded from our sitemap until the underlying problem is fixed.

7. What we never do

• Write as though we stayed somewhere. We have not.
• Invent atmosphere, service quality, quietness, breakfast or friendliness.
• Call a property historic, unique or boutique without a rule behind it.
• Let a commercial relationship change a selection or a ranking.

Found something wrong? [email protected] - corrections are welcome and we do not treat them defensively.