Transparency at
Discovering Stays

I know many people expect to read “thousands of dollars per video.” And I also know some of you won’t believe this.

At Discovering Stays, we do not accept direct payments from hotels for reviews. We never have — and we don’t plan to change that, no matter how big we get.

So… do we pay for our trips?

Sometimes a hotel offers us a complimentary stay, and sometimes we pay for the accommodation ourselves. Even when a hotel covers the room, we still pay the travel costs out of pocket. That way, we don’t “owe” the hotel anything — and we keep full freedom to be honest in our reviews and videos.

First: if a hotel is genuinely bad, we don’t go. Why create content about a place we wouldn’t recommend? We usually pick hotels with strong reviews (typically 8+), and sometimes 7+ if there’s something truly special.

Second: if we accept a hosted stay and our experience isn’t good, we don’t post it. We will never say a hotel is amazing if we didn’t enjoy it ourselves. I’d rather disappoint a hotel than disappoint my entire community by posting something that goes against my values.

"We will never say we loved a hotel if our experience wasn’t good."