This disclosure page was built simply to let you know about any advertising interests or inherent bias we may have throughout this blog, which legally covers us from policy put into place by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), among other regulatory authorities.
It can be increasingly difficult these days to determine what Internet pages are just ads disguised as sponsored content and which contain legitimate information.
We want you to be able to discern any advertising interests you may find on this website, so this is exactly what this disclosure policy intends to do.
Ads on This Website
Understand that there are a considerable amount of costs involved in building and maintaining a website. We use ads on this site to help keep the servers running, bring new travel info to you, and grow this little business of ours.
We never ask for donations and want to keep this website free. So advertisements are used to earn income from this website while keeping it free for you to read.
The ads on this site are managed through a company called Mediavine. For more information, visit their website Mediavine.com.
We also receive compensation from affiliate links (AKA referral links), which are detailed below.
Affiliate Link Disclosure
We recommend some of our favorite travel products, tours, or hotels, whenever relevant, within blog posts. In return, these companies sometimes pay us a commission for recommending their product or service. This is known as an affiliate link.
You still pay the same price, and the compensation we earn comes from the affiliated Company, not you. The affiliate links in no way ever affect the price you pay.
For example, we love this 3-outlet travel mini charger & surge protector with USB outlets
that you can buy from Amazon. We own one ourselves and recommend it as a lightweight device to travel with to charge multiple devices from a single outlet.
See, what we just did there. That’s an affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
We only recommend products and services that we truly endorse. We recommend them to you regardless of whether there is an affiliate link available or not. Our primary motivation is to help you discover the best value in travel through our recommendations.
It would be a tedious process to mark every affiliate link with a disclaimer and doing so would destroy the flow of an article on our website. So please assume that every link you find on this site is an affiliate link (although in reality, not all are).
Most Amazon links, tour operator links, travel insurance links, and accommodation booking sites that we link to from this site do indeed contain affiliate links.
Comped Travel Disclosure
We pay for most of our travel experiences and accommodation ourselves. But occasionally some nice companies will extend courtesies to us or will cover the cost of an experience in hopes that we will blog about it and spread the word about whatever they may have offered us.
It’s a win-win-win. We get to try out an experience or stay somewhere we may have not considered otherwise. In return, a Company gets some added exposure through our blog and social media channels. Hence you get the full scoop (with our truthful review and tips) on this experience that we otherwise may not have written about.
So if it’s a good fit for our site, we gladly accept such courtesies but we don’t let that affect our opinion. If we had a bad experience, you’re still going to get the truth from us, even if we burn some bridges with the company that hosted us.
We disclose instances of comped trips within blog posts by saying something like “We were guests of Planetary Expeditions during this intergalactic trip to Mars,” so you’ll know exactly when a company has graciously hosted us as guests.
Paid Post Disclosure
Some blogs receive money in exchange for guest posts or for making product recommendations. We currently do not do this. We have been approached by various casinos among other companies who have wanted us to place a prepackaged post about their service on our blog. We currently DO NOT do paid posts on this website. And we never have.
While that cash is certainly attractive, we’re simply not willing to sacrifice the integrity of this site that we’ve worked hard to build.
So if you see us recommending anything, you can be assured that we wrote it ourselves and that it is something we endorse without any ulterior motive.
Any Questions?
We hope that clears things up. But if you have any other questions about our disclosure policy, feel free to drop us a line.