Sources

Our Sources, in Order of Weight

Not all sources carry equal weight. We lean hardest on what we have seen ourselves and on official, on-the-record information, and we treat promotional material with appropriate caution.

First-hand experience

Our strongest source is our own. When we stay somewhere, eat somewhere, or visit an attraction, what we experienced — and photographed — is the primary source for that review. It is the reason the We Stayed badge exists.

Official and operator information

Hotels, resorts, cruise lines, theme parks, and tourism boards publish prices, schedules, itineraries, and specifications. We use this material for facts — what a price includes, when a park opens, which ports a sailing calls at. We do not treat operator marketing as independent assessment: a brochure tells you what a place wants you to think, not what it is like.

Booking partners and price data

We reference booking platforms and price data to show what trips actually cost. Prices are a snapshot, verified at the time of writing — see our verification policy — and readers should confirm the current figure before booking.

Other reporting

For travel news, we sometimes build on reporting first published elsewhere. When we do, we credit the outlet that broke the story, link to it where possible, and verify what we can independently rather than simply repeating it.

Reader tips and contributions

Readers tell us about price changes, new openings, things that have slipped, and details we have missed. Reader tips are valued — and they are treated as leads to verify, not as facts to publish unchecked.

Named and Unnamed Sources

Our strong preference is for named, on-the-record sources. A reader should be able to see where a claim comes from and judge it for themselves.

Occasionally a source — a hotel employee, an industry contact, someone with direct knowledge of a situation — will share something useful only on condition that they are not named. We will grant anonymity, sparingly, and only when all of the following hold:

The information is genuinely in the reader's interest to know.
The source has a credible reason to fear a real consequence — to their job or otherwise — for speaking openly.
We have a sound basis to consider the source reliable.
We have tried, where possible, to confirm the information through other means.

When we use an unnamed source, we tell the reader as much as we responsibly can about why the source is credible and why they are not named. We do not use anonymity to launder a rumour, to take an unattributed swipe at a business, or to dress up speculation as inside knowledge.

A promise of confidentiality is binding. If we agree to protect a source's identity, we protect it.

Press Trips, Review Stays, and Supplied Material

From time to time an operator may offer a complimentary or discounted stay, a press visit, or review access. Where any element of a visit was provided by the operator, we disclose it plainly in the article.

Disclosure is not a free pass. A hosted stay is reviewed by exactly the same standard as one we paid for ourselves, including the parts the host would rather we left out. Accepting a visit never comes with a promise of favourable coverage, and we do not give operators copy approval. Our Editorial Standards and Ownership & Funding pages set out the wider independence rules.

How We Attribute

Where a fact is not self-evidently public knowledge, we say where it came from — the operator, the official schedule, the outlet that reported it, or our own visit. Readers should not have to guess whether a claim is something we saw, something we were told, or something we read.

Source Errors

When a source — an operator announcement, an official listing, another outlet's report — turns out to be wrong and we repeated it, we correct our article, note that the error originated in the source, and accept responsibility for not catching it. We do not hide behind the source. See our corrections policy.