Editorial Standards & Methodology

Our six trust rules

These are the rules every destination page, guide and tool is held to. They are short on purpose, so they can be checked.

1. Every official level links to its source. Each government badge opens the agency’s own page. We do not ask you to take our word for what an agency says.
2. Every safety check carries a date. You will see when our editors verified the levels (October 2026) and, when the live UK check works, the exact UTC time it ran. If the live check fails, we show only the verified-table line and say nothing more.
3. Official warnings and our opinion are kept apart. A government warning and an editor’s view of street-level reality sit in different, clearly labelled panels. They are never blended into one score.
4. Estimates are labelled as estimates. Costs, crowd ratings and typical temperatures are ours, rounded, and reviewed periodically. Flights are never included.
5. Partners never touch the advice. We write the advice first, then add partner links. Sponsors cannot change a ranking, a safety note or a verdict, and every partner module is labelled.
6. Mistakes get corrected in the open. Tell us what is wrong at contact@shouldigo.net and we will fix it and, where it matters, say what changed.

How government safety levels are handled

Most travel sites lean on one government’s headline warning. We read five, because they do not always agree and the disagreements are informative. The agencies are:

• UK FCDOgov.uk/foreign-travel-advice
• US State Departmenttravel.state.gov
• Australian DFAT (Smartraveller)smartraveller.gov.au
• Japan MOFAanzen.mofa.go.jp
• South Korea MOFA0404.go.kr

What we link. Every safety panel links to each agency’s own page for the place in question (Korea always goes to the 0404.go.kr home page). We do not copy their text wholesale, and we do not quote a level we have not checked.

Where the levels come from. The Green and Amber pills come from an editor-verified table, last checked in October 2026. Agencies change levels without notice, so treat the table as a dated snapshot and confirm on the official page before you book. The UK is also read live from gov.uk each time you open a safety panel; when that works, the panel shows the UTC time of the check and the date gov.uk says its page was last updated.

The most cautious level wins. The banner at the top of a safety panel takes the most cautious of the five cards and the live UK reading. A live UK warning always outranks a green entry in our table. Any part-country warning shows as red, because red is the top of our scale.

What it is not. It is not an official rating of its own and not a substitute for the agencies. Places without a verified entry show neutral pills and links only.

Official government warnings vs editorial opinion

A government warning is a formal statement from an agency that answers for it. An editorial note is our judgement about what a normal traveller will actually meet on the street: which tram line has the pickpockets, which warning applies to a border province you will never visit. Both are useful. Confusing them is not.

So they look different. Official material sits in a blue-grey panel headed “Official Government Warnings”. Our own view sits in a cream panel with a dashed olive border and the tag “Our opinion, not an official warning”. The two examples below are illustrations of the styles, not real advisories.

Data sources: weather and costs

Weather. The live temperature on destination pages is read in your browser from the Open-Meteo Historical & Live API, for the main town or area only. If it cannot load, we show no number rather than guess. Typical highs and season notes are our own summaries.

Costs. Daily costs come from what we call Audited Local Lodging Taxes, Rail Tariffs & Dining Averages: our own estimates of what a day costs per person, reviewed periodically and dated. They are not quotes. The method is the same everywhere:

• Mid-range is our baseline, in US dollars per person per day.
• Backpacker is about 45% of mid-range; boutique or luxury is about 2.2 times mid-range.
• A couple shares a room, so accommodation falls by 25% per person.
• A day is split roughly 45% accommodation, 30% food, 15% transit, 10% activities.
• International flights are never included.
• Currency. Prices are shown in US dollars first, with approximate euro and pound equivalents at fixed rough rates (about €0.89 and £0.79 to the dollar, that is €1 = $1.12 and £1 = $1.27), not live exchange rates. Prices quoted in a local currency are converted to dollars with the local figure in brackets.

Crowd ratings (our “overtourism index”) are also our own estimates, rated for peak season, from 1 (quiet) to 5.

How the Natural-Language Vacation Matcher works

The Vacation Matcher and the Filtered Search share one engine. It is not AI. It reads your sentence with plain keyword rules for trip length, party size, total budget, warm or cold, month or season, and the activities you name, and says out loud which assumptions it made. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

It then scores all 50 places we cover, weighted like this:

• Budget fit, 35%. Your total against our estimated cost for the length and party you gave, using the same cost method as above (flights counted as two round-trip tickets per pair of travellers at a regional rough estimate, subtracted from your total first, with a clearly labelled rough buffer).
• Seasonal weather, 25%. Your month or season and your warm, mild or cold preference against our typical temperatures and sweet-spot months.
• Activities and vibe, 25%. The interests and region you named against what each place is known for.
• Consular safety, 15%. Our own safety rating, blended with the editor-verified government levels where we have them.

The top five are chosen with a diversity rule: at most two from any one region and only one per country, so you do not get five beaches in the same sea. Sponsors and partners have no influence on the ranking, and every cost shown is labelled as an estimate.

How we earn money

Should I Go is reader-supported. When you book through certain links or maps on the site, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The partners are Travelpayouts (Aviasales / WayAway flights), Booking.com, GetYourGuide, Omio, Airalo and Stay22 (the live accommodation maps).

Partner modules carry the label “Independent Editorial Pick • Reader-Supported”. The advice is written first and partners are added afterwards. A partner link has never moved a destination up a list, softened a safety note or changed a verdict, and it will not. We have no travel-insurance partner at the moment, so our insurance tip is plain advice with no link.

Site advertising and cookies are covered in the privacy policy.

Corrections

Prices drift, rules change and we do get things wrong. Write to contact@shouldigo.net with the page and what you found. We will check it, fix it, and note the change where it affects a decision. You can also use the contact page, read who we are, or see the methods at work in Compare.