How we handle a place that changes after we have written about it
Guidance goes stale. A hotel closes its dive center, a beach gets a new breakwater, a transfer route reroutes around roadworks. This page explains what we do when the place stops matching the page, so you can judge how much to trust any given article on this site.
- What gets a date
- Any claim that can expireVisa rules, baggage, seasonal closures, measured figures
- Correction priority
- Decision-changing firstSafety, cost, and accessibility over cosmetic
- Single reader report
- Treated as a leadHeld until a second source or our own check confirms
Why we treat every page as perishable
A travel page is a claim about the world at a moment in time. The moment passes. Amenities get cut, ownership changes, a road opens, a pier is demolished. None of that announces itself, and most of it never reaches a press release.
So we do not treat publication as the end of the work. A page is a live claim we are responsible for, not an archive entry. That framing matters because it decides what we do next: we monitor, we date our claims, and we correct rather than quietly leave errors in place.
The practical consequence for you is simple. If a fact can go out of date — a baggage rule, a visa condition, a seasonal closure — we date it. If a page carries no date on a time-sensitive claim, treat that as a gap, not a guarantee.
How we find out a place has changed
Change reaches us three ways. First, reader reports: someone who just got back tells us the pool was drained or the shuttle no longer runs. Second, scheduled re-checks: pages tied to a physical place get revisited on a cycle rather than only when someone complains. Third, upstream data: when a source we rely on updates a figure, the pages built on that figure flag for review.
Reader reports are the fastest and the least reliable, so we verify before we edit. One message saying the beach has changed is a prompt to look, not a fact to publish. We treat a single unconfirmed report as a lead and hold it until a second source or our own measurement confirms it.
What counts as a change worth correcting
Not every difference matters. A repainted lobby does not change your decision. A removed kids club, a closed dive operation, a beach that now shelves off steeply, a transfer that doubled in time — those change decisions, and those get corrected.
We sort changes by whether they affect the choice a reader is making. If the change would move someone from booking to not booking, or from one property to another, it is a priority correction. If it is cosmetic, it waits for the next scheduled pass. This is a judgment call, and we would rather over-correct on anything involving safety, cost, or accessibility.
Some of what we publish is our own measurement — a routed transfer time, a water-entry gradient, shade at noon. When the ground truth behind one of those numbers changes, the number is wrong until we remeasure, so those corrections take precedence.
What we change on the page, and what stays visible
When we correct a page, we change the claim and the date attached to it. We do not silently rewrite history. If a correction reverses earlier advice — we said the property suited families and it no longer does — we say so plainly rather than deleting the old line and pretending it was never there.
Where a figure came from a third party, the source stays cited so you can check it yourself. Where a figure is ours, the method stays stated so you can judge it. A correction that removes the reasoning is not a correction; it is a new unsupported claim.
If we cannot verify a change, we mark the claim as uncertain rather than assert either version. "We could not confirm this at the time of writing" is a more honest sentence than a confident guess, and it tells you exactly where to double-check before you book.
How to tell whether a page is still current
Check the date on the specific claim, not just the page. A page updated this year can still carry a transfer time measured two years ago. We try to date claims individually for that reason, and where we have not, that is a gap you should treat with caution.
For anything that expires — visa rules, driving requirements, baggage allowances, seasonal opening — read the footnote and follow it to the source before you rely on it. For a physical detail like water entry or shade, our measurement is a snapshot; a new breakwater or a new building can undo it. When in doubt, tell us, and we will look.
What works
- Time-sensitive claims are dated individually, not just at the page level
- Corrections that reverse earlier advice are stated openly, not deleted
- Third-party figures keep their source; our own figures keep their method
- Safety, cost, and accessibility changes are prioritized over cosmetic ones
What does not
- Reader reports are fast but unverified, so corrections lag confirmation
- Not every claim is individually dated yet
- Cosmetic changes may wait until a scheduled re-check
Who should go somewhere else
readers wanting a live, real-time feed of every change — corrections follow verification cycles, not instant updates
Instead: check the property or operator directly for same-week details, then tell us what you find
Questions people actually ask
how do I know if a travel guide is out of date
Look for a date on the specific claim you care about, not just the page. A transfer time or seasonal closure should carry its own date or footnote. If a time-sensitive detail has no date and no source, treat it as unverified and confirm with the property or operator before you book.
what should I do if a place is different from what the article said
Tell us what changed and when you were there. We treat a single report as a lead rather than a confirmed fact, so we verify before editing. Reports about safety, cost, accessibility, or a removed amenity get looked at first, because those change booking decisions.
do you delete old advice when you correct a page
No. When a correction reverses earlier guidance, we say so on the page rather than quietly deleting the old line. Third-party figures keep their source and our own measurements keep their method, so you can always see what changed and check it yourself.
how often do you recheck a page
Pages tied to a physical place are revisited on a cycle, and they also flag for review when a reader reports a change or when upstream data updates. Cosmetic differences wait for the next scheduled pass; decision-changing ones are corrected as soon as we can verify them.