Editorial policy
How we recommend hotels
Every review page on this site follows the same editorial process. Here is the full explanation: how we pick hotels, how we verify them, and how we make money.
How we choose hotels
Six criteria, applied to every hotel before it earns a review page.
- Location. Is the hotel in a place a well-travelled reader would actually want to base themselves? A Reykjavík hotel needs to be walkable to Laugavegur or the harbour; a South Coast hotel needs to be within a sensible drive of Reynisfjara or Jökulsárlón.
- Price transparency. Rate cards published, seasonal variation disclosed, no hidden resort fees.
- Aurora visibility (where relevant). For aurora hotels, we verify Bortle-scale dark-sky quality and the room orientations that face open sky.
- Hot-spring access (where relevant). On-site geothermal pool, private hot tub, or a documented walk to a public thermal bath.
- Room-type variety. A hotel with only one room type limits the review’s usefulness; three or more room types gets more editorial detail per persona.
- Aggregated guest reviews. Booking.com floor of 8.0 and Tripadvisor pattern that indicates the front-of-house delivers on the marketing.
Have we stayed there?
Every review page carries an editor’s-stay disclosure at the top of the body copy. Three states.
- Stayed. An editor spent at least one night in the last 24 months, at the hotel’s standard published rate or with disclosed press-stay terms.
- Verified without staying. No editor stay, but the review is compiled from aggregated guest data (Booking.com plus Tripadvisor plus hotel materials plus interviews with recent returning guests).
- Press stay disclosed. Editor stayed with the hotel’s compliments, disclosed at the top of the review, with a note that press stays do not influence rankings or verdicts.
How we make money
Hotelsiniceland.com is an affiliate-supported publication. Three revenue lines.
- Booking.com Partner Program. Primary. Widgets on every hotel review page, every region hub, every roundup. Commission per completed stay.
- Hotels.com and Expedia (via EGAP). Secondary. Comparison widgets where they add value to the reader.
- Direct hotel affiliates. For named properties (typically the higher-end lodges), we sometimes carry a direct booking link. Commission structure disclosed on the review page.
Affiliate revenue does not affect our rankings. We publish the same review whether a hotel pays 4 percent commission, 12 percent commission, or zero. The Booking.com Partner Program has a flat commission rate; the incentive to prefer higher-commission hotels does not exist within our primary revenue line. Where a direct affiliate carries a materially higher rate, we disclose it on the review page.
What we do not do
- No paid rankings. Ever.
- No sponsored posts, in year one or beyond.
- No display ads.
- No AI-generated review copy. Editors write; we use AI as a research and drafting assistant but every published word is edited by a human.
- No linkbait titles.
- No Iceland cliches (“land of fire and ice”, “otherworldly”, “bucket list”). Iceland is a real country and deserves real writing.
Editorial questions: [email protected].