Ratings and Write-ups: A General Explanation

Subjective is what subjective was; my evaluations tend to be positive and upbeat unless something quite egregious occurs. Why?

Being able to travel is a huge privilege. It doesn’t matter what class of service or mode of transport. Knowing that a huge swath of our world population can’t afford basic necessities (let alone travel for fun), I appreciate what we get to do. Everything is a bonus. We’ve had a bunch of cool experiences; as a refugee growing up on welfare, I never imagined I’d get to visit new places and have friends all around.

Flight and lounge reviews tend to be more matter of fact while location and hotel posts are filled with more inspired memos. My goal is not to be a definitive source, but rather to stir your interest so that you’ll do additional research for your travels. And for the most part, the pictures and videos do the talking.

I provide an overall rating (10/10 being highest) whereas subcategories are qualitative: horrible, poor, okay, good, excellent. This helps you understand, the relative experience overall, but I didn’t think it would be fair to assign a quantitative site to the subcategories as I’m not using any technical measurements.  I’ll also give my thoughts on what improvements can take the experience up a notch.

Where applicable, I close each review by answering the money question: If I could pay cash for the experience, would I?  This is somewhat also hypothetical, because I would rather travel more often than spend a lot of money on fewer trips.  However, it also helps to underscore how I value a particular experience.  For example, I may rate the overall experience at a hotel at 10/10, but would I pay 1000 USD/night?  It’s unlikely, but I can understand that someone celebrating a very special occasion might do so.  Also note that I specify the term “cash” because we don’t encourage taking on debt; we would not be in the miles and points game if it meant that we were living beyond our means.

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