How we work

We founded 22places because we wished a travel blog like this had existed for us. One that doesn’t sugarcoat everything, but tells you clearly what’s worth it — and just as openly, what isn’t. One that makes trip planning simple: organized, clean, no fluff.

That’s been our standard since 2014. We do the research for you, so you spend less time searching and more time actually looking forward to your trip. We stand behind that with our name, our team, and our experience from hundreds of destinations we’ve visited ourselves.

Who’s behind 22places?

22places was founded in 2014 by Jenny and Sebastian Ritter. What started as a small travel blog has grown into an independent digital media company: 22places Media S.L., based in Fuerteventura.

Today our team is 14 people strong — and every single one of them explores destinations firsthand. Everyone brings their own experiences, perspectives, and areas of expertise.

You can always see who wrote which article directly on the article itself. We also show you, for each destination, which team members were actually there in person. Meet everyone on our team page: Meet our team

How we create our content

Every article on 22places is based on real travel experience. Here’s how our editorial process works:

Our own travels: We travel to the places we write about — ourselves, on our own dime. We don’t accept paid press trips where someone else gets to dictate what we write.

Research and fact-checking: Beyond our personal experience, we thoroughly research the practical stuff: opening hours, prices, how to get there. We update our articles regularly, and every post clearly shows when it was last updated.

Editorial independence: No partner has any influence over our ratings or recommendations. When we do work with tourism boards or companies, we draw a hard line between that partnership and our editorial opinion. Paid content is always transparently labeled.

Journalistic standards: Our team works to journalistic standards. We only recommend things we genuinely love and would confidently pass on to our closest friends — and we’re just as upfront when something didn’t win us over.

How we use AI

All of our articles are created by real people. That said, artificial intelligence is part of our editorial toolkit.

We use AI as a support tool — for structuring content, drafting text, and formatting.

What AI is not, however, is a substitute for real travel experience. The foundation of every article is always our team’s firsthand experience on the ground. No article comes from pure AI research. We don’t recommend anything we haven’t experienced ourselves or thoroughly verified.

What we recommend — and what we don’t

We have a simple rule: we only recommend things we’ve tested ourselves or that we’ve carefully analyzed and found to be genuinely good. That applies to hotels, tours, city passes, and any product recommendations you’ll find in our articles.

For hotels, that means: we’ve either stayed there ourselves, or we’ve dug deep into the details — location, reviews from other travelers, and our own accumulated experience with that destination.

How we fund our work

All of our tips on 22places are free for you. We fund our work in two ways:

Affiliate links: Many of our articles contain affiliate links, which we mark with an arrow after the link. If you book or buy something through these links — a hotel through Booking.com or a tour through GetYourGuide, for example — we earn a small commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra. And importantly: the commission has zero influence on what we recommend. We choose hotels, tours, and products based purely on quality — not on who pays the highest commission. It regularly happens that we recommend things we earn nothing from, simply because they’re the best option. You can find a full list of our main recommendation partners on our Support us page.

Our own products: Alongside our free content, we offer our own products that we’ve developed and published ourselves.

Partnerships: Some of our articles are advertorials — meaning someone has paid us to write and publish that piece. This could be a destination, a hotel, or a company. These articles are clearly labeled at the top. We’re very selective about which partners we work with. We never recommend anything we don’t genuinely like or wouldn’t use ourselves — which is why we turn down more than 90% of all partnership inquiries.

How we handle errors

Travel information changes: prices go up, opening hours shift, hotels close or renovate. Despite regular updates, information in one of our articles can sometimes fall out of date. If you notice something that’s no longer accurate, we’d love to hear from you.

You can reach us through the contact form at the bottom of every article or by email. We review every tip and correct our content as quickly as possible — directly in the article, without hiding the mistake. If it involves a significant change, we visibly update the date accordingly.

Independence and transparency — in brief

We travel independently and pay for our trips ourselves. No partner has any influence over our editorial content. We only recommend what we’ve tested or thoroughly verified. Affiliate links are always marked with an arrow. Paid partnerships are transparently labeled. We correct factual errors openly and promptly. Every article has a clearly named author.

Questions about how we work?

If you have questions about how we work, what we recommend, or how our content is created, feel free to reach out. Transparency matters to us — which is exactly why this page exists.