Editorial and Disclosure Policy
At Sand In My Suitcase, our goal is to share inspiring, practical and trustworthy information about luxury travel – with a twist of adventure! – all illustrated by beautiful photos.
For every travel experience or destination, you may find several (sometimes dozens!) of travel guides. They may cover how to get there, popular attractions, top activities, the best hotels, itineraries for planning your trip and so on.
Below, you can get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how we craft, write, publish and keep our blog’s content fresh. You’ll also find our policies on press trips, getting paid and maintaining our journalistic independence and integrity.
To learn more about us personally and how we founded this blog, see our page about Sand In My Suitcase.
How we create content
All of our content is written or edited by us personally. (And we’re real human people!)
Many articles we write ourselves, from beginning to end.
But for some other articles, we have help.
Writing help
As our blog has grown, we’ve hired writers to help behind the scenes. We provide them with the outline for each blog post or article, our research and our notes from our trip. After each article is written, we fact-check and edit it thoroughly before it’s published.
A few guest contributors have also written articles for our blog. They’ve written about places they’ve personally visited (but which we may or may not have traveled to). The contributor’s name is shown at the top of their guest post, with an additional brief bio at the end.
As well as relying on the help of writers, we use various tools and resources to help us write and create content – from online dictionaries and thesauruses to modern AI tools.
We aim to express ourselves in the clearest way possible. And Janice, with a background in professional travel journalism, always strives for writing that shines. With a little help from these resources, we can turn ordinary (sometimes boring) stories into sentences that sing – and be more telling at the same time.
Reviews
We only write about resorts, cruises and trips that we personally recommend.
And we always strive to be honest. You can trust us to report on the good (and to let you know of things you should be aware of).
Photos
Many of the photos that illustrate our blog posts are ones we’ve taken. We typically indicate at the end of each post the ones that are ours.
Other photos are obtained from paid photo subscription services like Deposit Photos (which allows us to publish royalty-free stock images).
You’ll also find hotel, tour and other photos taken by the hotel or tour company. We always try to credit the hotel or company with the ownership of these images.
Updating content
To the best of our ability, we try to ensure that the information on Sand In My Suitcase is current and accurate.
Frequent updates are part of our routine, with the aim of giving you the most relevant and current information. We show the date of the latest update at the top of each post.
Monetizing our content
To enable us to offer this content free of charge to you, the reader, we’ve adopted various methods to monetize our blog.
Advertising
Our blog advertising is exclusively handled by Mediavine, a partner we selected for their reputation as a leading force in the industry. Since joining forces with them in 2019, we’ve watched them evolve into one of the world’s premier ad companies.
When you first visit our site, you’ll encounter a pop-up requesting your consent to our data and cookie policy, a necessary legal step facilitated by Mediavine.
Affiliate links
All links to external sites are included to help you – so you can easily click on the website of the particular hotel, cruise ship or tour operator without having to hunt for it!
Some links are affiliate links.
If you click on any of these affiliate links, you’ll be taken to the affiliate company’s website. If you then make a purchase there, we may receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you. (Thank you!)
You can read more about Mediavine and our affiliate links in our Privacy Policy.
Amazon links
We are a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites (again, at no cost to you).
As an Amazon associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
Other affiliate links
Another affiliate company we work with is Booking.com. When we pay for hotels, we often use Booking.com ourselves. (We like their free cancellation policy.)
Other affiliate companies we work with include GetYourGuide and Viator for activity and tour bookings, Stay22 and Discover Cars.
Sponsored content
On extremely rare occasions, we will review a travel product, service or experience, for which we are paid. If we think it’s something useful to you, we’ll do it.
These sponsored posts typically include information or content provided to us (which we fact-check to the best of our ability). But we write or edit all posts, and we only feature posts that we think add value to your reader experience.
And we always disclose when we’ve received payment for a post. (You’ll see a Disclosure statement at the end of the post.)
Editorial integrity
We sometimes accept press trips or hosting (as do all professional travel journalists).
This means our travels are sometimes fully or partially supported financially. And we tell you at the end of a post if a trip, hotel stay, cruise or other travel experience has been substantially supported.
Working with airlines, hotels and tourist boards can help us do our jobs.
But they don’t pay us for our travel articles or posts.
And we never provide positive reviews in exchange for media support. We maintain complete editorial control over what we write, and we let you know the good and the not-so-good.
All views expressed on this site are our own.
As well, we are members of the Travel Media Association of Canada. And Janice also belongs to the Society of American Travel Writers and North American Travel Journalists Association. We follow these associations’ professional codes of ethics.
Any questions about our editorial policy?
Feel free to reach out to us personally at: Janice@SandInMySuitcase.com.
If you have a question or comment about a particular destination or travel experience, please comment directly underneath the post in the Comments section.