There are two kinds of luxury travel content on the internet, and
both of them are lying to you a little.
The first kind is written by the points people. They are brilliant,
they are obsessive, and they have flown more first class than most
pilots. But their content exists to get you to open credit cards,
because that is what pays them, and it shows. Every review orbits the
redemption. The hotel is a “35,000-point sweet spot.” The suite is a
“great use of a free night certificate.” Nobody ever tells you whether
the place is worth actual dollars, because in their world, nobody spends
actual dollars.
The second kind is written by the magazines. Gorgeous photography,
lovely prose, and a business model that depends on the hotels being
reviewed buying the ads next to the review. Ask yourself when you last
saw a major travel magazine tell you to skip a famous hotel. Take your
time. I will wait.
Here is who nobody writes for: the person who has money because they
worked for it, respects it because they earned it, and wants to spend it
well. You do not want to manufacture spending across five credit cards.
You do not want a brochure. You want someone to tell you whether the
St. Regis is worth $400 a night more than the Westin, whether the club
lounge beats just paying for breakfast, and where to have dinner that is
not the hotel’s Italian restaurant with a one-word name.
And if you are traveling with kids, as I often am, there is a third
kind of content lying to you: the family-resort review written by
someone who got the stay free and would not tell you the kids club was a
windowless room with a tired teenager and an iPad if their lives
depended on it. I would. I do. When we pay $4,000 for a suite that
sleeps four, I want to know whether the connecting rooms actually
connect, whether the kids club is real supervised fun or expensive
babysitting, and whether I can get one adult dinner without a logistics
operation. So I tell you, with the same receipts I use for everything
else.
That is who this site is for. I call it cash travel, not because
points are bad (I use them, sensibly, and I will tell you when they are
the smart play), but because the discipline of paying real money for
things clarifies the mind wonderfully. When it is your $2,800, “nice” is
not good enough. It has to be worth it.
So here is the deal, stated once and then lived up to:
I tell you who paid, every single time. Most of the time it is me.
When a hotel comps the room, you will know before you read a word, and
it changes the disclosure line at the top, never the verdict below it. A
free room has never once bought a kind word here, and it never will.
I show my math. Prices, receipts, and dates of stay appear in
reviews, because a recommendation without a price attached is just a
mood.
I review the neighborhood’s food like it matters, because it does. I
have never once come home from a trip raving about a duvet. I come home
raving about a grandmother’s rice dish in a restaurant with eleven
tables. Both belong in a travel review. Only one currently appears
anywhere.
I tell you what went wrong. Every stay has a flaw. A review without
one is an ad.
I am, by trade and by temperament, the guy who asks whether a thing
is actually worth it. This site is that one question pointed at hotels
and dinner: what your money really buys at the check-in desk and at the
table.
If that sounds useful, the newsletter is one honest email a week:
where I slept, what I ate, what it cost, whether it was worth it. No
hacks, no hype, no eleventh credit card.
Welcome. Dinner’s at nine. We are eating where the locals eat, and I
am paying.