How we work
How paid placement works here
Updated
Almost every travel site you have used is paid by the businesses it recommends, and almost none of them will tell you where. This page tells you: what we sell, what it costs a business in influence, and the specific reason the answer to “does paying change what I see?” is no rather than “we take independence very seriously”.
Where this stands today
Nobody pays us anything. No operator holds a position in any category, no business has an agreement with us, and nothing you read on this site is currently sponsored by anyone. That is published as data rather than as a promise — the category status page is generated from the same registry the rest of the site reads, so it changes the day the situation does.
We are telling you this while it is true and unflattering, so that you have a reason to believe us later when it is neither.
Why paying cannot change your recommendation
This changes nothing a traveler is shown. The decision engine, the activity planner and every guide are built from format data that contains no commercial field at all — so there is no place in the code where a payment could be read, let alone weighted.
Concretely: the decision engine compares trip formats — a shared reef trip, a private sail, a half-day backcountry charter — and scores them against your group size, your swim comfort, your dates, your tolerance for a rough ride and eight other things you tell it. The file those formats live in names no business, and imports nothing from any commercial part of the codebase. There is no field for a payment, so there is nothing for a payment to weight.
That is a stronger guarantee than a policy, because a policy relies on somebody remembering it. Our recommendation methodology explains what the engine does use, and the site's automated checks fail the build if a commercial module is ever imported into the recommendation path.
What we actually sell
Four levels, two of them paid. In plain terms, what a business can buy is an introduction — the chance to be the operator we pass an inquiry to, once you have chosen to send one and agreed to be contacted. It is not a place in your results.
- Listed
- Your trips described accurately, from facts checked against your own published material.
- Enhanced
- The same listing, carrying the planning detail travelers ask you for by phone.
- Category Partner
- For an agreed term, you are the operator we introduce in your category.
- Founding Category Partner
- The first Category Partner in a category, on founding terms, before there is a track record.
What money does not buy, at any level
- A better position in the decision engine, the activity planner or any guide
- A change to what a guide says about who an activity does not suit
- Removal of a caution, a weather warning or an eligibility rule
- A rating, a badge, a score or the word 'best' attached to a business
- Being described as vetted, verified, licensed, insured or approved by us
- A traveler's contact details without that traveler having agreed to it
- Silence about the fact that the placement is paid
An operator who asks for any of these is told no, and it is the one thing we will end a paid relationship over. Not because we are principled about it in the abstract — because the moment you stop believing this page, the introduction is worthless to them too.
Where you will see it disclosed
- On the page where a placement appears
- Labelled where you can see it while you are reading, not in a footer you would have to go looking for.
- On the category status page
- Every category carries its operational state in plain words, including the fact that no operator is assigned to any of them right now.
- On the operator-facing pages themselves
- The levels, what each includes, and the same sentence about editorial effect that appears on this page.
An introduction is not a booking
Even where a relationship exists, we take no payment for trips, hold no inventory, and cannot see anybody's calendar. We do not offer real-time availability, we cannot confirm a departure, and we cannot promise anyone will reply to you. The full list of what we cannot promise is published separately and is worth two minutes before you send anything.
And we do not describe any business as vetted, verified or approved. What we check, and what checking does and does not establish, is set out in how we review.