How We Pick Every Hotel & Experience We Recommend
We're an independent travel guide funded by affiliate commissions. Here's exactly what that means, what it doesn't mean, and how every recommendation on this site gets made.
The short version — if you don't want to read the whole page
- ✓We earn a commission when you book through our links. The price you pay is unchanged.
- ✓No hotel, tour operator, or destination tourism board has ever paid to appear on this site.
- ✓We don't accept free stays, press trips, or gifts in exchange for coverage.
- ✓Commission rates are roughly equal across hotels — we can't earn more by steering you toward a worse option.
- ✓If we wouldn't recommend a property to a family member, it doesn't appear here.
What Vacation Inclusive Is
Vacation Inclusive is an independent travel research site. We write neighborhood guides, hotel comparisons, and itineraries for destinations in Italy — and we're expanding to other European countries.
We are not a hotel booking agency, tour operator, or travel company. We don't handle reservations, process payments, or manage any part of your trip. When you click one of our hotel or experience links, you go directly to the booking platform — Expedia.com, GetYourGuide,or Skyscanner.
Our revenue comes from affiliate commissions paid by those platforms when a booking is completed. This is how we keep every guide free to read.
Our Six-Point Hotel Selection Criteria
Every hotel that appears on Vacation Inclusive is evaluated against all six of these criteria before we recommend it. A hotel can fail on any single one and not make the list.
Location first, always
A hotel in the wrong neighborhood is a bad hotel, regardless of its star rating. We start by mapping every option against walkability to major sights, public transport, and safety. A beautiful property 40 minutes from everything you came to see doesn't make our list.
Real guest reviews, not press trips
We cross-reference across Expedia.com, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, and Google — looking for consistent patterns across hundreds of reviews, not cherry-picked highlights. A hotel with a 7.2 score and 2,000 reviews is more trustworthy than a 9.8 with 11 reviews.
Honest value at every budget
We pick hotels across three tiers — budget, mid-range, and luxury. Our benchmark isn't the cheapest price: it's the best value. A $180/night hotel that includes breakfast, free cancellation, and a central location beats a $140/night one that doesn't.
Free cancellation as a baseline
We strongly prefer recommending hotels with free cancellation. Travel plans change. We won't push you toward a non-refundable rate just because it pays a higher commission.
Guides updated at least annually
Hotels open, close, change management, and decline. We review every guide at least once per year and update recommendations when the data warrants it. You'll see a 'Last reviewed' date at the bottom of every major guide.
Hotels we wouldn't recommend get removed
If a property's reviews drop significantly — new ownership, declining cleanliness, service complaints — we remove it. Our commission goes to zero on that link. We think that's the right call.
How Affiliate Links Work — Explained Plainly
When you click a hotel link on our site, you're taken to Expedia.com (or another platform). Our link contains an affiliate ID that tells Expedia.com the visit came from us. If you complete a booking, Expedia.com pays us a commission — typically 4–6% of the booking value — from their own margin.
Important: your price doesn't change.
The commission Expedia.com pays us comes from their side of the transaction. The rate you see is identical whether you arrive from our link or type the hotel name directly into Expedia.com. You're not paying more by using our recommendations — you're just helping us keep these guides free.
We also use affiliate links for tours and experiences through GetYourGuide and for flight searches through Skyscanner. The same principle applies: commission from the platform, no price change for you.
Commission rates across Expedia.com are roughly uniform — we don't earn meaningfully more by recommending one hotel over another within the same platform. We have no financial incentive to recommend a $300/night hotel over a $100/night one if the $100 option is better for your needs. In fact, a well-matched recommendation that earns your trust for the next trip is worth far more to us than one high-value booking from a reader who never returns.
Questions We Get Asked
Do you earn money when I book through your links?
Yes. When you click a hotel or tour link and complete a booking, we earn a commission from the platform (typically Expedia.com, GetYourGuide, or Skyscanner). The commission comes from the platform's margin — it does not add to what you pay. The price you see is the same whether you book through us or go directly.
Does the commission influence which hotels you recommend?
No, and here's why that's structurally true, not just a claim: commission rates on Expedia.com are largely uniform across properties (typically 4–6% of the booking value). We can't earn more by recommending one hotel over another. What we can earn more of is your trust — so recommending a bad hotel to get a booking costs us more than it gains.
Do hotels pay to be featured on your site?
No. Hotels, resorts, and tour operators cannot pay for placement, higher rankings, or preferential coverage on Vacation Inclusive. We have no sponsored hotel listings, no 'featured property' pay-to-play arrangements, and no advertising from the properties we recommend.
Do you accept free stays or press trips in exchange for coverage?
No. We don't accept complimentary accommodation or hosted trips in exchange for reviews. Our recommendations are based on research, guest review data, and — where we have first-hand experience — our own travel. If that ever changes, we'll disclose it clearly on the relevant article.
How do you choose between two similar hotels?
We look at four tiebreakers in order: (1) consistency of reviews over the last 12 months, (2) cancellation policy flexibility, (3) what past guests praise specifically — not just overall scores, and (4) value relative to comparable options in the same neighbourhood. We always pick the one we'd book for a family member.
What if a hotel I booked through you wasn't what you described?
We want to know. Email us at the address on our contact page and we'll review the property. If the experience genuinely doesn't match our description, we'll update or remove the recommendation. For booking disputes (cancellations, charges, room changes), you'll need to contact Expedia.com or the property directly — we aren't a booking agent and can't intervene on transactions.
Why do you link to Expedia.com and not other platforms?
Expedia.com has the widest inventory, a reliable free-cancellation filter, and a strong review system we trust as a data source. We also link to GetYourGuide for tours and experiences. We're open to adding other platforms where they serve readers better — affiliate commission is not the deciding factor.
See Something Wrong?
Hotels change. If you've stayed somewhere we recommend and your experience didn't match our description — or if you find factual errors in any guide — we want to know. We review and update based on reader feedback.
Contact us →We respond to all factual correction requests within 5 business days.