How we decide what goes in

Every place, guide and city page carries one of four labels, and the label is visible on the card as well as the page:

• We've been. One of us has been there and the words are ours. It is the only label that constitutes a personal recommendation, and we use it sparingly.
• Researched. Compiled from published sources — the venue's own site, municipal information, reporting we trust. Useful, and not the same thing as having been. Check opening hours before you travel.
• Sample. An entry written to demonstrate the format while the site is being built. It is not a recommendation and does not describe a real assessment.
• Sponsored. Someone paid for it. See below.

Sponsored pieces name the sponsor at the top of the page, in the same size type as everything else, before the article begins. They are never labelled only in a footer, and they never present a paid inclusion as a personal visit.

Partners get factual accuracy — if we have a date, a name or a price wrong, we fix it. They do not get copy approval. If we cannot write something honest about a place, we say no to the work rather than write it anyway.

Where an outbound booking link earns a commission, it says so next to the link, and the link carries rel="sponsored nofollow". A commission never changes whether a place is included or how it is described.

At the time of writing there are no affiliate links on this site. The mechanism exists and is disclosed in advance rather than retrofitted later.

Places close, move and change hands, and researched entries go stale faster than visited ones. Every page shows when it was published, when it was last updated, and — where relevant — when the practical details were last checked.

If something here is wrong, tell us. We correct the page and update the date rather than quietly editing it.

Images are currently freely licensed photographs from Wikimedia Commons, used under their stated licences and credited with the photographer and licence beneath each one. They are placeholders: as the founders' own photography replaces them, the credit line changes with it.

We do not use photographs taken from other publications, and we do not present a stock image as though it were ours.

No invented reviews, no fabricated audience statistics, no client case studies that did not happen, and no event listings for events that are not scheduled. If a page here has nothing real to show, it says so.

Questions about any of this: yournextstopclub@gmail.com.