Editorial Standards

Last updated: May 2026. This page is reviewed quarterly.

Packzup is an independent travel publication. Every guide on the site was written by a named editor who paid their own way to the place and is willing to be wrong on the record. This page documents the rules we wrote down so we keep doing it that way.

What we publish

First-hand only. If a guide describes a city, a neighborhood, a restaurant, a hike, a hotel, a route, or a piece of transit infrastructure, somebody on our team has been there. We do not write about places from press releases, marketing decks, or Wikipedia entries. We do not aggregate Reddit threads into pseudo-original content. We do not run AI-generated travel articles dressed up with stock photography.

Plain pricing. Every price we quote is one we either paid ourselves or sourced from a transparent third party (booking aggregators, transit authorities, museum websites) and dated. If a price will likely change — airfare, fluctuating exchange rates, season-dependent hotel rates — we say so and tell you the range we observed.

Plain routes. Our itinerary recommendations are sequences we actually walked, drove, took the train through, or boarded the ferry on. When we shorten an itinerary for the reader, we name what we cut and why.

Honest verdicts. We are willing to write that a popular destination is overrated. We are willing to tell you the balloon ride was a let-down. We have published “skip it” pieces on places where the affiliate commission would have been substantial. That is the whole point of the publication.

How we research

Every destination guide is anchored to at least one first-hand visit, usually a recent one. Where we update an older guide (a price changed, a restaurant closed, a visa rule moved), we date the update at the top of the page and note what changed.

For factual claims that are not easily verified by visiting (historical context, geological background, etymology, demographic data), we use named, reputable sources and link to them in the page where the claim appears. Government tourism statistics, peer-reviewed sources, official park service publications, and the destination’s own primary documents are our first choice. We do not cite content farms or reblogged listicles.

How we fact-check

Before a guide is published:

• All numerical claims (distances, altitudes, prices, opening hours, durations) are checked against at least one independent source.
• All named places (hotels, restaurants, museums, transit stations) are verified to still be operating as of the publication date.
• All transit recommendations (train routes, bus schedules, ferry frequencies) are checked against the operator’s official site, not a third-party aggregator.
• Visa, entry-requirement, and currency claims are checked against the originating government’s official source within seven days of publication.

For guides older than twelve months, we re-verify time-sensitive sections before each quarterly review. If we cannot re-verify a section, we remove the claim rather than leave it.

Our use of AI

We do not use AI to write our travel writing. Every paragraph on Packzup that describes a place, a route, a meal, a hotel, or a tip was typed by a named human who has been there.

We do use AI for narrow, declared tasks: spell-checking, light copy-editing for grammar (similar to what a copy editor would do), pulling together structured data (weather averages, currency conversion tables, sunrise times), and generating image alt text from photographs we took ourselves. None of those uses replace the editorial judgment of the writer. None of them produce the prose you read on the site.

If we ever start using AI for substantive content generation, we will say so on this page before we publish anything written that way.

How we are funded

Packzup is reader-supported. We make money from a small number of affiliate links to products and services we have actually used (hotel-booking aggregators, currency exchange providers, a couple of travel-insurance brokers, eSIM providers). When we include an affiliate link, the disclosure is on the page where the recommendation appears — not hidden in the footer or a separate disclosure page.

We do not accept press trips. We do not accept paid placements. We do not accept comped hotel stays in exchange for coverage. We do not accept “collaboration” pitches where the deliverable is a backlink, a guest post, or product placement. We have declined campaigns from major tourism boards because the conditions included veto rights over our verdict.

What we will not accept

To make this explicit so there is no ambiguity:

• No sponsored articles. Including ones disguised as editorial.
• No paid links. Including links from agencies, link-builders, or SEO outreach.
• No guest posts. Even free ones. Especially the free ones.
• No press trips. We pay for our own flights, hotels, food, transit, and excursions. Always.
• No comped stays. Including for hotels we would otherwise recommend.
• No advertorials. No tourism-board-branded content. No native-ad placements.
• No affiliate cloaking. If a link is affiliate, it’s disclosed on the page where it appears.
• No AI-generated articles. Even SEO-optimized ones. Especially the SEO-optimized ones.

If you have a pitch that involves any of the above and you would like us to politely decline so you can record the decline, email us at editorial@packzup.com with “Decline” in the subject. We will reply.

Corrections

If we got something wrong, please tell us at editorial@packzup.com with “Correction” in the subject. We update the page itself within 48 hours, note the correction with date at the bottom of the page, and resend any affected newsletter editions.

We do not silently revise. If a substantive claim was wrong, the correction stays visible on the page so you can see what we changed and when.

Our writers

John Morrison is the founder and lead travel writer at Packzup. He has spent the last decade exploring underrated destinations on six continents with a focus on offbeat regions that traditional travel media routinely skip: the Caucasus, Central Asia, the southern Italian Mezzogiorno, the inland Balkans, eastern Anatolia, and the second cities of Latin America. He writes most of the destination guides on the site and edits everything else.

Drew Treasury is a contributing travel writer at Packzup, covering city culture, food markets, street art, and neighborhood travel across Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Drew’s pieces are the ones that go deep on a single neighborhood or a specific food scene rather than surveying a city as a whole.

Both writers have named bylines on every piece they produce. Both writers paid their own way to the destinations they cover. Both are reachable at the editorial address.

Conflicts of interest

If a writer has a personal or financial connection to a place they are covering (a relative who owns a hotel, a friend who runs a restaurant we recommend, equity in a service we link to), it is disclosed on the page. We do not pre-screen writers’ vacation histories — sometimes people write best about the places they keep returning to, and that is a feature, not a bug. We just say so when it applies.

Independence

Packzup is owned by Packzup Inc. There is no parent company, no investor, no media-group sister site, no advertorial partnership network. The publication’s editorial direction is set by the founding editor and is not subject to outside influence.

If that ever changes — an acquisition, a strategic investor, a holding-company restructuring — we will say so on this page before the change is final.

Updates to this page

This page is reviewed quarterly. Material changes (a new policy, a relaxed rule, a new disclosure) are dated at the top and announced in the next newsletter.

Questions about anything on this page: editorial@packzup.com with “Editorial standards” in the subject.