How we research resorts

The honest version

Most resort content is written by people who have not been to the resort either. The difference is that we say so, and then show our work.

Every fact on a resort profile here comes with a source and a date. If the operator does not publish something, the page says “not published by the operator” rather than quietly filling the gap from a travel blog that was itself guessing. That is less satisfying to read than a confident paragraph. It is also the only version we can stand behind.

Where facts come from, in order

We work down this list and stop at the first level that answers the question.

1. The operator’s own website and fact sheets. Room counts, check-in times, what the rate includes, kids club ages, published fees.
2. The brand’s published policies. Minimum ages, cancellation frameworks, loyalty terms.
3. Official airport and destination authorities. Airport operations, ground transportation categories.
4. Government and tourism authorities. Taxes, entry requirements, environmental levies.
5. Scientific and monitoring bodies. Hurricane climatology from the National Hurricane Center, sargassum seasonality from the satellite monitoring programs that actually track it.
6. Open geographic data, for coordinates and locality boundaries.

What is deliberately absent from that list: other affiliate sites, review aggregators, and our own memory. If a fact is not in one of those six places, it does not go on the page.

What we do with what we find

Each fact is stored separately from the page that displays it, with the source it came from, the date we read it, and a confidence value. Pages are built from those records. This has an unglamorous but useful consequence: we cannot accidentally type the wrong room count into an article, because the article does not contain a typed room count. It contains a reference to a fact.

It also means that when an operator changes something, we change one record and every page that used it updates at once.

When sources disagree with themselves

This happens more than you would expect. One resort in our current set publishes a dining structure of two show-cooking restaurants plus four à la carte, and then names eight restaurants further down the same page. Another publishes an identical room count for two different sister properties.

We do not pick the flattering number. We record both, flag the field for re-verification, and say on the page that the operator’s own figures do not reconcile. You can then decide how much weight to give it.

What we will not do

• Claim or imply a stay, a site inspection, or a personal test we have not done.
• Copy a review score from a booking site and present it as a rating of ours.
• Invent a score out of ten. We do not rate resorts, because a single number hides the thing that actually matters, which is who the resort is wrong for.
• Fill an unknown with a plausible guess.
• Write a paragraph of atmosphere to cover a gap in the facts.

The one section we never leave empty

Every resort profile has a Who it is not for section, and it is mandatory. A profile that cannot say who should avoid a resort is marketing, not research, and it does not publish here.

Each entry in that section has to point at a specific fact or a specific gap. “Not for adults who want a child-free resort, because the operator classifies it as a family property” is a usable warning. “Not for everyone” is not.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we will date the fix. Our sourcing is only worth something if it survives contact with people who know more than we do.

Last verified 2026-09-12.