The Record

Why the form does not change

Every hotel on this site is written to one pattern: a single line at the top, four fields, one date at the foot. The pattern does not widen for a famous building and does not shrink for a small one. Reading becomes quicker, because you always know where the answer sits. Comparison becomes honest, because each hotel has been asked the same four questions and given the same amount of room to answer them.

What each field holds

ON SITE describes what physically stands on the ground: the age of the building, how it was made, what it was before, what shows from the street or the shore. IN USE describes how that building works today as a hotel: rooms, cabins, capsules, halls, how they are fitted and how they differ from one another. AROUND IT describes the immediate surroundings: the street, the water, the terminal, the slope, the village, the way the district is built.

None of the three fields holds prices, star ratings, room counts, floor areas, awards, opening hours or schedules. None of them holds a judgement about service. We do not report on staff, food quality or atmosphere, because those change faster than any record can follow and because we do not stay in the hotels we write about.

Why the fields do not overlap

A fact belongs to one field only. If the age of a building is given in ON SITE, it is not repeated in IN USE. If a river is named in AROUND IT, it is not named again above. The rule is strict, and it keeps a short record from spending half its words saying the same thing twice. It also means the four fields can be read separately, one across all nineteen hotels, which is the fastest way to compare them.

What SORT OUT FIRST means

This last line is preparation, not complaint. It names the one practical matter that is easiest to get wrong from a distance: which station or airport actually serves the place, whether a season limits it, whether a transfer, a ferry, a train or a border crossing stands in the way, whether a car helps or hinders. A hotel appearing here is a working business, and nothing in this field is meant as a fault.

What REVISED means

The month and year under a record is the day the editors last went through the published sources for that hotel. It is not the date of a visit, and it does not claim that everything was re-checked on the ground. Names change, operators change, and a building can be renamed between one reading and the next, so the date tells you how fresh our reading is and nothing more.

Where the material comes from

We work from published sources: the hotels' own sites and press material, architectural writing, museum and municipal records, and reporting in general publications. Four editors keep the sheets, and one of them works on facts alone. There is no shared office and there has been none since the site began in 2020. We publish no accounts of staying anywhere, because we do not treat our own nights as evidence.

What this site does not publish

No prices, no star ratings, no scores, no booking of any kind. We take no commissions, we sell no mentions, and we accept no payment for adding, changing or removing a record. There are no affiliate links on any page. A hotel can write to us with a correction, and a correction that is supported by a published source will be made; that is the whole of the relationship.