Affiliate Disclosure

Heads up: some links below are affiliate links. If you book through one, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only link to places and tours I'd actually send my own family to — if something's not worth it, I'll tell you.

What this means, plainly

When you click certain links on this site — usually for hotels, tours, activities, or booking platforms — and then book or buy something, the company on the other end may pay this site a small commission. That commission comes out of their marketing budget, not your pocket: you pay the same price whether you click our link or go to the company directly.

We work with affiliate programs in the categories of hotel and accommodation booking, guided tours and activities, and general travel booking platforms. We'll name specific programs here once they're active.

Where the disclosure appears

Per FTC guidance, a disclosure only counts if a reader actually sees it before they act on it — a footer link alone isn't enough. So beyond this page, every section of a guide that includes affiliate links also carries a short version of this same disclosure, placed before the first link a reader reaches in that section, not buried afterward.

How recommendations get chosen

Recommendations are not for sale, and they're not ranked by commission rate. If a hotel, tour operator, or booking platform pays a commission but isn't somewhere I'd actually send my own family, it doesn't get recommended — and where something has a real downside, the guide says so, commission or not. If we ever receive a free stay, tour, or product in exchange for coverage, that arrangement will be disclosed on the specific page it applies to, separately from the general affiliate relationships described here.

Every affiliate link on this site also carries a technical rel="sponsored" attribute — invisible to readers, but it's how we tell search engines the link involves a commercial relationship, per Google's own guidance on sponsored content.

Questions about a specific link or partnership? Get in touch.