Our Story: how this guide decides what to say

Fare Basis is an independent guide to planning international leisure travel. This page sets out what we read, what we check and the rules we keep, so a reader can test our recommendations for themselves.

Judgement a reader can test

We are an independent guide. This site does not sell travel, take bookings or quote prices, and it does not stand behind any business it mentions. What it offers is a method: we read the public sources that govern a trip, set them against each other, and say plainly what they leave unsettled.

Our readers are deciding, not browsing. They want a straight answer from someone who has looked into the question, and they can tell marketing copy from a checked fact, so we treat a caveat as more useful than a superlative.

When we talk about working with a travel advisor, we mean someone who is part of the wider advisor profession. For the detail on how that profession is organised in the United States, see the American Society of Travel Advisors.

A recommendation is only worth reading if the reader can see how it was reached.

A US passport beside a blurred boarding-pass-style document on a white surface

How a recommendation gets made, in the order it happens

Start with the decision in front of the reader

Most questions arrive as a choice between two things: a month, or a style of trip. We settle that choice first, because the timing of the rest of a trip's planning follows from it.

Read the rule before the opinion

Entry documents, health advice, refund rights and lodging price rules come from public bodies and regulators. We cite the page we read, and when that page is a trade summary or a news report rather than the rule itself, we say so beside the claim, so a reader knows how far to trust it.

Set the options side by side

When two styles of trip could suit the same reader, we list what each one covers, what its deposit secures and which dates can move, and we compare those lines rather than the marketing around them.

Mark what the sources did not settle

Where a source is blocked, out of date or silent, we say so on the page. We do not fill the gap with a plausible figure.

Rules a reader can hold us to

Does the guide quote prices?

Only when a named public source states the figure and the source sits beside it. A number without a source is taken out, not rounded or estimated.

Does the guide rank businesses?

No. The site publishes no best-of list of agencies, cruise lines, resorts or tour operators, and no page places one business above another.

Does the guide claim first-hand trips?

No. The guide has not made the trips described on these pages, and photographs are described as what they show, never as a visit.

Does the guide use invented voices?

No. The site carries no reviews, testimonials or customer quotes. The only quoted sentences are the owner's own, or a sentence taken from a named public source.

A vintage world map on a desk with a notebook, a pencil and a magnifying glass — Reference maps and a notebook: the working material a planner uses before a quote arrives. This is a stock photograph, not a picture of the guide's desk.

The gap this site fills for a planner

A planner from Massachusetts has to settle the season, the style of trip, the documents and the money, usually in that order and usually against a deadline. A page that opens with a destination or a price leaves the month and the paperwork to the reader. This site starts with those two, so a reader knows which decision comes first and what each one sets in motion.

Massachusetts places, shown as scenery

The clip shows towns and landscapes in Massachusetts, the region a reader departs from. It is here for context, and it is not advice about any trip, operator or destination.