Trips To The World is an independent travel guide, written and maintained by Samer Alqaisi. It is the sister site to A Trip To Istanbul, A Trip To Madrid and A Trip To New York, which cover single cities in the same way this one covers everywhere else.
What this site is trying to be
There is an enormous amount of travel content and very little of it commits to anything. Most destination writing will tell you a place is worth visiting. Far less of it will tell you which of the four observation decks is worth the money, that the Inca Trail books out six months ahead, that Torres del Paine requires a bed reserved a year in advance, or that the Serengeti’s migration is somewhere different every month and nobody can promise you a river crossing.
That specificity is what this site is for. Not that somewhere is beautiful — where to stand, what month, what it costs, and when it is not worth it.
How it is researched
Checked against the source. Fees, seasons, permit rules and access requirements come from the relevant authority — park services, heritage bodies, transport operators, national tourist boards — and are dated on the page with the day they were verified.
Dated, or absent. If a price or an opening time is not on a page, it is because it has not been checked recently enough to be worth printing. A travel price with no date on it is not information, and on a site covering a hundred countries it is worse than that: the fee moves and the currency moves too.
Anything quoted here should be treated as an indication and checked before you budget around it. Pages whose prose quotes a figure carry a note saying so.
Corrections are made quickly and acknowledged.
How it is funded
This site carries advertising and some affiliate links, mainly hotel and flight search. If you book through one, the site may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
What that does not buy: no destination, hotel, tour operator, airline or tourist board has paid for a mention, a review or a position on this site. There are no sponsored posts, no paid placements in any list, and no press trips. Nothing here has been written in exchange for a free stay.
Where something is not worth the money, the page says so. Where a place is under visitor pressure, the page says that too, and suggests going in a different month or somewhere else — which is not a commercially sensible thing for a travel site to do and is the reason to trust the rest of it.
The positions this site takes
A few things recur across the guide and are worth stating plainly rather than leaving implicit.
Season over destination. Most disappointing trips are the right place in the wrong month.
Slower is better. Fewer places, longer, is the only advice that works for everyone.
Animal attractions that require the animal to be available on demand are welfare problems, and this site will not recommend them.
Overtourism is real and measurable, and where a place is struggling the page says so and suggests an alternative.
Flying has a cost that is not cancelled by behaving well on arrival. See travelling responsibly.
Photographs
The photographs on this site are not the author’s. They come from Wikimedia Commons under licences that permit reuse, and every one is credited beside the image and again in full at /credits/.
Corrections and contact
Things change — a permit system, a border, a bus route, a price. If something here is wrong or out of date, please say so. Specific corrections with a date or a link are the most useful kind.
The contact form goes to a person, or write to [email protected].
Press and partnership enquiries are welcome and will not result in coverage. That is not a negotiating position; it is the only thing that makes the rest of the site worth reading.
More about the author at sameralqaisi.com.