How we choose

Every hotel on this site has to answer one question: if a friend were going to this destination, would we tell them to book it? If the answer needs a caveat longer than a sentence, it does not make the edit.

Official information and room categories. Guest feedback across Expedia and other booking platforms, Google and Tripadvisor. Reddit threads and forum discussion. Recent guest photography and video. Professional reviews. Maps, orientation and what is actually walkable. Renovation history, rates across the year, and the complaints that keep coming back.

We synthesise patterns. We never copy marketing language or review text, and we do not reduce a hotel to a number.

Every hotel page carries a section called The Catch. It is the recurring negative from research, stated plainly. A recommendation you can trust has to include the part the brochure leaves out.

A destination edit is ten hotels that are each good for a different reason: the all-rounder, the icon, the smart money, the hideaway. We would happily book every one of them. The reason is the tag on its card, and Better Fit matches the reason to the way you travel.

If you book through our links we may earn a commission from Expedia. It never affects which hotels appear or where. Hotels cannot pay for inclusion, and we do not accept free stays in exchange for coverage.