Our Methodology

How we choose which destinations to cover

There are roughly 2,000 cities and islands worth a serious traveller's attention. We currently cover 30, by deliberate choice. Every destination we add to the editorial list passes three internal tests.

First — direct experience. A member of our editorial team has spent at least 4 nights at the destination within the past 18 months. We don't write about places we've only researched.

Second — depth over breadth. We only add a destination to the active list if we have enough material to write a guide of meaningful depth (8–12 thousand words across the destination page and supporting articles). If a place doesn't justify that, we don't pretend it does.

Third — fact-check schedule. Once a destination is in the active list, we commit to a seasonal review (every 6 months minimum) of its quick-facts, prices, hotel selection, and any policy changes (visa rules, transport, etc.). Destinations we can't credibly maintain on this schedule are moved to a separate "archive" list and removed from active recommendation.

How we test hotels

Every hotel that appears on TravelBuzzy has been visited in person by a member of our editorial team. The review process has three layers.

Layer 1 — paid stay. We book under a personal name, pay the full public rate, and identify ourselves as journalists only after checking out. This means we get the same room, the same check-in experience, and the same service as any other paying guest. We track every interaction (front-desk attentiveness, concierge knowledge, response time on requests, breakfast quality, room maintenance) against a 28-point rubric.

Layer 2 — local cross-check. For every property we cover, we contact at least two local-resident sources (a fellow journalist, a guide, a long-term expat) and ask a structured set of questions about how the property is regarded by people who live in the destination. If our paid-stay impression diverges meaningfully from the local view, we say so.

Layer 3 — six-month price check. Hotel pricing changes seasonally and post-renovation. Every price we publish is checked twice a year — once during the winter low season (January) and once at the summer peak (July) — and updated. The "Updated [date]" line on every destination page reflects the most recent price audit.

We do not accept comped stays, press-rate discounts, or upgrades from properties we may cover. Roughly twice a year we receive these offers; we decline them in writing and keep records of the offers and our refusal as part of our editorial archive.

How affiliate income works (and how it doesn't shape what we say)

TravelBuzzy is reader-supported. Almost every "Book now" link on this site is an affiliate link — when you book through one, the booking platform pays us a small commission, at no extra cost to you. This is the income that pays for our team's travel, our independent paid stays, and the running of the site.

Three rules we hold ourselves to.

First: editorial selection comes before commercial selection. The hotels we feature are chosen by our editors based on the testing process above. Once a hotel passes editorial review, we then apply affiliate links from the platform that offers the best public rate for it (most often Booking.com, Hotels.com, or Hostelworld for budget). If a property doesn't have an affiliate option, we still feature it — and link to its direct booking page — when it deserves to be featured.

Second: affiliate commission rates do not influence editorial ranking. Booking.com's commission rate for us is roughly equal to Hotels.com's; neither pays us a "preferred placement" fee. We don't accept those arrangements.

Third: all outbound affiliate links are tagged rel="sponsored nofollow", which is the standard Google requires for paid commercial links. You'll see this in the page source, and it complies with the FTC's affiliate disclosure rules. Our full Affiliate Disclosure is published separately.

What you won't find on this site

A few things our editorial line specifically excludes.

• Unreviewed AI-generated copy. We use AI tools as drafting and research aids — never as the final voice. Every article is rewritten, fact-checked, and signed off by a named editor before publication. Our full AI policy is below.
• Sponsored articles disguised as editorial. If we ever run sponsored content, it will be labelled as such above the headline, not buried in fine print.
• Press-trip reviews. We don't accept them. Properties we cover have not paid for our presence.
• Listicles built on volume. We won't write "47 Best Things to Do in Tokyo" because that is not how a city actually works. Our destination pages are intentionally shaped around 4–6 deep sections rather than 40 shallow ones.
• SEO-driven content with thin substance. Every article on The Edit (our blog) is at least 1,500 words and based on first-hand knowledge. We turn down keyword opportunities we can't honestly cover.
• Algorithmic price scraping. Hotel prices on TravelBuzzy are checked manually twice a year. We don't pull live rates from booking APIs because that creates incentives we don't want.

Our AI policy

We adopted the same editorial line as The Atlantic, Bloomberg, and Wirecutter on AI tools in 2025: human-led, AI-assisted. The promise is not "no AI was used"; the promise is "no AI was the final voice." Specifically:

• Where we use AI: early-stage research summaries, factual outline drafts, translation aids, copy-editing for typos and consistency, and structured data (schema, sitemaps, alt-text suggestions).
• Where we don't: the final voice, the editorial judgements ("which hotel goes first"), the trade-offs we surface, the recommendations we make, or any direct quote from our editors.
• Editor accountability: every article carries a named byline. The editor on the byline has personally read, fact-checked, and approved every paragraph — meaning if a fact is wrong, the editor's name is on it.
• Disclosure when relevant: if we ever publish a piece that's substantially AI-drafted (we haven't), we'd label it openly with a note above the headline. Reading "By [Editor Name]" without a label means a human wrote and owns the piece in the way readers expect.

We think this is the honest standard for travel publishing in 2026. The websites that claim "100% human, no AI" are usually either lying, technically wrong (using Grammarly counts), or paying writers so poorly the result reads worse than a careful human-AI collaboration would. We'd rather be transparent than make a marketing claim we can't audit.

Who writes this

Our editorial team is small and named. Every article and destination guide carries a byline, a published date, and a "last updated" date. We don't use anonymous staff bylines or generic "TravelBuzzy editors" credits.

How we handle corrections

If something on TravelBuzzy is factually wrong, we want to fix it. Three principles.

• Email us at [email protected] — we reply within 3 working days, usually faster.
• Substantive corrections (anything that affects what a reader would do — pricing, opening hours, transport routes, visa rules) are made within 7 working days and noted at the bottom of the corrected article with the date and what was changed.
• If the original error was material — meaning a reader could have made a meaningfully different decision — we say so. We don't quietly edit and pretend the error wasn't there.

A note on what this site is not

TravelBuzzy is an independent travel publication run by a small team of working travel journalists. We are not a booking platform — we partner with established platforms (Booking.com, Hotels.com, GetYourGuide, Viator) for the actual transactions. We are not a tour operator. We do not offer travel insurance. We do not arrange visas. We are not a customer service line for any hotel or airline.

We are an editorial product. We test things, we recommend things, we tell you when we'd choose something else, and we get paid a small commission when you book through our links. That is the whole business model. If you find that the editorial value is worth the small commission you contribute by booking through our links, we'd consider that a good outcome for both of us.